FITSVERIFY(1)

💫 fitsverify — the vibe check for your FITS files 💫

okay bestie, so this is fitsverify(1) from the User Commands section, and honestly? it's giving strict but fair. It reads your FITS files and tells you if they're actually conforming to the rules. No cap. 🔍✨

---

✨ NAME ✨

fitsverify — test if the input file(s) conform to the FITS format 🦋

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

fitsverify filename ...

fitsverify @filelist.txt

---

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So here's the tea: this task reads one or more input FITS files and verifies that they conform to the specifications of the FITS Standard document (known as the NASA/Science Office of Standards and Technology 'Definition of the Current FITS Standard', document number, NOST 100-2.0, available online at https://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/). Iconic. 📜

The input filename template may contain wildcard characters, in which case all matching files will be tested. Slay, batch mode.

Alternatively — and this is the lil shortcut I'm obsessed with — the name of an ASCII text file containing a list of file names, one per line, may be entered preceded by an '@' character. 🎀

---

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -H — test ESO HIERARCH keywords 👑
• -l — list all header keywords 📋
• -q — quiet mode; print one-line pass/fail summary per file 🤫
• -e — only test for error conditions; don't issue warnings 🚫⚠️
• -h — Help 🆘

---

😭 ERROR CONDITIONS 😭

these are the big ones, the "we need to talk" moments. not me being dramatic but each of these = your file failed the vibe check 💀

• Mandatory keyword not present or out of order
• Mandatory keyword has wrong datatype or illegal value
• END header keyword is not present
• Sum of table column widths is inconsistent with NAXIS1 value
• BLANK keyword present in image with floating-point datatype
• TNULLn keyword present for floating-point binary table column
• Bit column has non-zero fill bits or is not left adjusted
• ASCII TABLE column contains illegal value inconsistent with TFORMn
• Address to a variable length array not within the data heap
• Extraneous bytes in the FITS file following the last HDU
• Mandatory keyword values not expressed in fixed format
• Mandatory keyword duplicated elsewhere in the header
• Header contains illegal ASCII character (not ASCII 32 - 126)
• Keyword name contains illegal character
• Keyword value field has illegal format
• Value and comment fields not separated by a slash character
• END keyword not filled with blanks in columns 9 - 80
• Reserved keyword with wrong datatype or illegal value
• EXTEND not present in the primary array if there are extensions
• BLOCKED, if present, not among the first 36 keywords
• XTENSION keyword in the primary array
• Column related keyword (TFIELDS, TTYPEn, TFORMn, etc.) in an image
• SIMPLE, EXTEND, or BLOCKED keyword in any extension
• BSCALE, BZERO, BUNIT, BLANK, DATAMAX, DATAMIN keywords in a table
• Image WCS keywords (CTYPEn, CRPIXn, CRVALn, etc.) in a table
• Table WCS keywords (TCTYPn, TCRPXn, TCRVLn, etc.) in an image
• TDIMn or THEAP keyword in an ASCII table
• TBCOLn keyword in a Binary table
• THEAP keyword in a binary table that has PCOUNT = 0
• XTENSION, TFORMn, TDISPn or TDIMn value contains leading space(s)
• Index of any WCS keyword (CRPIXn, CRVALn, etc.) greater than value of WCSAXES
• Index of any table column descriptor keyword (TTYPEn, TFORMn, etc.) greater than value of TFIELDS
• TSCALn or TZEROn present for an ASCII, logical, or Bit column
• TDISPn value is inconsistent with the column datatype
• Length of a variable length array greater than the maximum length as given by the TFORMn keyword
• Logical column contains illegal value not equal to 'T', 'F', or 0
• Character string column contains non-ASCII text character
• Header fill bytes not all blanks
• Data fill bytes not all blanks in ASCII tables or all zeros in any other type of HDU
• Gaps between defined ASCII table columns contain characters with ASCII value > 127

---

⚠️ WARNING CONDITIONS ⚠️

not a full fail, but... bestie, we're side-eyeing this file 🙈

• SIMPLE = F
• Presence of deprecated keywords BLOCKED or EPOCH
• 2 HDUs have identical EXTNAME, EXTVER, and EXTLEVEL values
• BSCALE or TSCALn value = 0.
• BLANK OR TNULLn value exceeds the legal range
• TFORMn has 'rAw' format and r is not a multiple of w
• DATE = 'dd/mm/yy' and yy is less than 10 (Y2K problem??)
• Index of any WCS keyword (CRPIXn, CRVALn, etc.) greater than value of NAXIS, if the WCSAXES keyword is not present
• Duplicated keyword (except COMMENT, HISTORY, blank, etc.)
• Column name (TTYPEn) does not exist or contains characters other than letter, digit and underscore
• Calculated checksum inconsistent with CHECKSUM or DATASUM keyword

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

HEASARC at NASA/GSFC 🛰️💜 (actual legends, fr fr)

---

🫶 REPORTING BUGS 🫶

https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/ftoolshelp

---

lowkey a whole checklist but honestly? run it, fix the errors, and your file will be that girl. 💅

---

okay that's the whole page, bestie, and the lil sign-off at the bottom is: fitsverify, Oct 2010 — so yeah, this page has been serving accurate FITS-verification realness since way back. periodt. 🎀✨🦋