Input and Output of Images and Spectra

VISTA operates on images or spectra stored in internal memory buffers. Before you are able to analyze an image or a spectrum, you need to load your images into one of the buffers from files on disk. After an image has been loaded into memory, you can copy it to other buffers, or write the data to disk. Below, we will use the word ``image'' to connote both 2-D images and 1-D spectra, since functionally a 1-D spectrum is treated as a 1-D image with only one row of data.

NOTE: Version 5.0 of VISTA does not provide any commands for magnetic tape handling, as magnetic tape as a random access medium has largely become obsolete, having given way to mass disk storage (traditional magnetic disks, optical disks, and CD-ROM media) with multi-gigabyte capacity.

These two commands are used to read and write images:

RD
read an image from a disk file
WD
write an image to a disk file

These commands set the default data directories used by VISTA:

SETDIR
set the VISTA default directories & file extensions
CD
change the current working directory

These commands are used to work on image buffers:

COPY
copy an image between buffers
BUFFERS
list the contents of the image buffers
DISPOSE
clear (delete) image buffers
CHANGE
renames objects
CREATE
create a blank image buffer

These commands work on the headers of images stored in memory:

FITS
insert/edit FITS header cards
UNFIT
delete FITS header cards
HEDIT
edit FITS headers
FIXHEAD
fix FITS headers



Subsections