FITS Files

The MATLAB^® high-level FITS functions provide a simplified programmatic interface for reading data from FITS files and writing data from the MATLAB workspace to FITS files.

The MATLAB low-level FITS functions provide finer control over the reading and writing process of FITS files by providing access to more than 50 functions in the CFITSIO C library. To use these functions in MATLAB, prefix the function name with the matlab.io.fits namespace path, or use the import function to add the namespace to the current import list prior to calling the function. For example:

import matlab.io.*;
fptr = fits.openFile("tst0012.fits");

To use the MATLAB low-level FITS functions, you must be familiar with CFITSIO C API programming concepts, described at https://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/.