.fz or .FITS files? You choose!

Posted on 12/07/2021 by Sarah Roberts

The LCO archive has been updated recently so that you can now choose whether to download the compressed (.fz) or uncompressed (.fits) files of your chosen observations. Although .fz files are smaller in size, not all software packages were able to open them, so the addition of ‘on the fly’ decompression allowing users to download the .fits files, which can be opened by a wider range of software packages, is a much welcomed update to the archive.

Instructions:

If you want to download images from the LCO data archive, tick the small box to the left of the Basename of the image(s) you want (as circled on the left) and click the blue ‘Download’ button at the top of the page. There are 2 options which you can choose: 

1. zip download (with compressed fits files) or 

2. zip download (with uncompressed fits files). 

If you choose option (1) then your files will be the .fits.fz format and whatever software package you use to open the files must be able to display .fz files. If you choose option (2) then your file sizes will be larger, but you can use any software package that opens .fits files to open your data. 

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