Munipack ‒ External Helper Utilities

# External utilities

Munipack source codes does not includes some usefull utilities which can be used independently. Only graphical user interfaces are provided.

# Rawtran and dcraw

Rawtran is a conversion utility of raw photos produced by digital cameras (.CR2, .RAW) to FITS format. One produces files suitable for astronomical image processing (photometry, astrometry, …).

By operation, rawtran is just only a wrapper around dcraw. Rawtran offers improved functionality over recommended utilities in conversion of output of dcraw to FITS format. Dcraw is not part of Munipack distribution and should be installed separately. Fortunately, dcraw is included in many Linux distributions (also one is easy to compile).

# Fitspng

Fitspng is a conversion utility from images stored in FITS to images in PNG format. One produces PNG images which can be directly displayed by standard desktop tools and edited in usual manner. Fitspng can be very usefull for batch processing or preview of FITS files on Web.

Fitspng take advantage of the high dynamical range naturally provided by FITS format. The conversion applies advanced types of both luminosity or color conversions, scaling, etc. to get visually satisfactory results in widelly spreaded but restricted RGB color spaces.

# Konve

Konve is a conversion utility from legacy SBIG ST-x format to FITS format. The utility and the format itself are now obsolete (21. century).

# Picko

Picko is a conversion utility from Christian Buil's PIC format to FITS format.