.FITS File

The fits file extension is used for Flexible Image Transport System format, a most commonly used standard format for images used in astronomy. Historically, magnetic tape was the original storage medium for FITS formats.

FITS is a digital file format used to store, transmit, and manipulate scientific and other images, specially in Astronomy. A major feature of the FITS format is that image metadata is stored in a human-readable ASCII header, so that an interested user can examine the headers to investigate a file of unknown provenance.

FITS is also often used to store non-image data, such as spectra, photon lists, data cubes, or even structured data such as multi-table databases. A FITS file may contain several extensions, and each of these may contain a data object. For example, it is possible to store x-ray and infrared exposures in the same file.

This file format also sometimes uses FTS file extension or FIT file extension.

A fits file extension is associated with the Flexible Image Transport System a standard format for astronomy images. Ae fits file stores picture image.

How to open:

There are also some specialized FITS viewers that can open .fits files.Some image viewers such as GIMP, Photoshop, XnView and IrfanView can generally read simple *.fits images, however are not able to interpret more complex files.

How to convert:

Specialized viewers AVIS - FITS Viewer can convert .fits images to common bitmap files.