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Color FITS files generally exist in two main types:
- True Color FITS Images (also called RGB FITS)
- These contain separate image planes for red, green, and blue (RGB) channels, meaning each pixel holds a complete RGB color value
- Some dedicated astronomical cameras with three separate imaging sensors (one per color channel) can produce True Color FITS images directly.
- Since the color channels are already separated and calibrated, True Color FITS images do not require debayering.
- Bayer Pattern FITS Images
- These contain data from a color sensor with a Bayer filter array, where each pixel records only one color (red, green, or blue).
- To produce a full-color image, a demosaicing (or debayering) process is needed to reconstruct the missing colors at each pixel.
- These are often used in one-shot color (OSC) astrophotography cameras, where a single exposure captures color information directly.
Phoranso supports both Bayer Pattern FITS and True Color FITS images, ensuring that users working with color FITS files can still perform accurate photometric analysis.
- It automatically converts Bayer Pattern FITS images into grayscale images by averaging or extracting a single channel.
- It provides tools to split both True Color and Bayer Pattern FITS files into three separate monochrome FITS files, representing the red, green, and blue channels. This allows photometry to be performed on each color channel separately, avoiding inaccuracies introduced by interpolation and ensuring reliable magnitude measurements.
- For True Color FITS images, the ability to split the image into three distinct FITS files enables users to analyze the individual color channels as if they were taken through separate photometric filters, making it easier to work with multicolor datasets in a scientifically rigorous manner.
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