Inter-operability with FTOOLS

FTOOLS is a package for manipulating FITS files, including FITS tables. It comprises a collection of utility programs to create, examine and modify FITS files. FTOOLS contains many useful functions which complement CURSA. It is developed and maintained by the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (HEASARC) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and is in widespread use around the world.

FTOOLS can inter-operate with CURSA. However, clearly, it can only access FITS files, not the other formats accessible to CURSA. If your CURSA catalogues are in one of the other formats you should use catcopy to convert them to FITS tables prior to accessing them with FTOOLS. Also, in order to interpret the celestial coordinates in catalogues CURSA uses specific FITS keywords in the FITS header. Though these keywords are perfectly standard, and FTOOLS will process catalogues containing them, it attaches no special significance to them and will not attempt to interpret the celestial coordinates.

There is a `home page' for FTOOLS at the GSFC. The URL is:

http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/ftools/ftools_menu.html

An identical copy is maintained at the LEDAS data archive service of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester. The URL is:

http://ledas-www.star.le.ac.uk/ftools/ftools_menu.html

This copy may be more convenient for users in the UK or Europe. The home pages give access to a great deal of useful information about FTOOLS. Copies of the software and its user manual can be retrieved. FTOOLS is available for all the variants of Unix supported by Starlink (and numerous other systems).