FITS to animated GIF

[Dr Paul Leyland]

I have a series of six FITS files, each with a precise WCS so they can be aligned within an arcsecond or so. One of the objects is moving and if all six frames are loaded into a ds9 viewer, locked to the WCS, and then blinked the moving object is very noticeable to the eye.

What I do not know how to do is build an animated GIF so that the movement can be displayed to others, on britastro.org for instance.

Can anyone help me with this problem? A solution which uses freely available software which runs under Linux and/or WINE is preferred.

Thanks, Paul

[John Thorpe]

I have plenty of experience of GIFs but none of FITS files so I am on very unsure ground here. A Google search, however, tells me that the downloadable program realConverter will convert FITs to JPGs or GIFs. Whether this runs with Linux I am unsure, probably not.

https://www.reaconverter.com/convert/fits_to_jpg.html

Once in this format they may be processed as animated GIFs. I use Photoshop for this but there are plenty of free GIF makers on the web.

[David Swan]

Paul,

I think that PIPP, designed for lucky imaging crowd, can do animated gifs. The creator says it can be enjoyed with WINE.

https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/

David

[Dr Paul Leyland]

David Swan wrote:

Paul,

I think that PIPP, designed for lucky imaging crowd, can do animated gifs. The creator says it can be enjoyed with WINE.

https://sites.google.com/site/astropipp/

David

Thank you, I will check it out.

The reason for my request is now public at https://britastro.org/observations/observation.php?id=20220819_140838_474d0d65ddd59b61

Paul

[David Basey]

Hi Paul,

If PIPP doesn’t work you could try GIMP. It is what I used for the animation of my new observatory posted a few weeks ago. I used the Windows version but I understand it is available on multi platform including UNIX.

David.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Thanks. I have the GIMP and have used it in the past for minor image manipulation but never thought of using it for making animated GIFs.

I will give it a try but find its complexity and learning curve intimidating. 8-(

[Robin Leadbeater]

Align and stack programs like Siril for example
https://siril.org/
can output a series of fits images as avi which can then be converted to animated gifs using various on line tools

Cheers
Robin

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