pyhdfits.py

Drop-in replacement for pyfits / astro.io.fits. This provides an open() function that opens either a FITS file, or a HDFITS file, and return a FITS object. The idea here to replace:

>> from astropy.io import fits as pf

with the following import:

>> from fits2hdf import pyhdfits as pf

So that both HDF5 and FITS files can be read transparently.

fits2hdf.pyhdfits.open(*args, **kwargs)

Open a file, and return a FITS HDUList object.

This overrides the default pyfits open, and first checks to see if the file is a HDF5 file. If so, then the file is opened using fits2hdf.io.hdfio and then exported to a FITS file (in memory, not on disk).

If you’re not careful, this will override the standard open() class. So, never do “from pyhdfits import open”, as this would be bad. #TODO: Do this slightly different, to avoid the open() issue