How to migrate catalogues from ASCII to FITS format - Knowledgebase / Post-Observations (Phase 3) / Phase 3 FAQs - ESO Operations Helpdesk

How to migrate catalogues from ASCII to FITS format

Q: How to convert an ascii file (table) to a fits file?

A: You can perform the following steps:

Create a comma separated ascii table. For example if the table (cat1.txt) has n columns separated by white spaces:
```
awk '{print $1,","$2,","$3,","$...,","$n-1,","$n}' cat1.txt > cat2.txt
```

Convert the new table (cat2.txt) into a fits file using the stilts tool:

stilts tcopy cat2.txt cat.fits ifmt=csv ofmt=fits-basic

Usage:

stilts <stilts-flags> tcopy ifmt=<in-format> ofmt=<out-format> [in=]<table> [out=]<out-table>

Add the missing header keywords according to the ESO Science Data Products Standard.

The STIL Tool Set can be downloaded from:

For more information please check the following documentation: