Zip files and Fits files

[Carole]

Went out last night to try to do some imaging but also to see whether I could get this pesky SC3 to work on guiding (it does LX when it feels like it, so is not reliable).  I had downloaded WXA at one point and was planning to use that for guiding.  

It certainly looked as though the guiding would work as WXA hooked itself onto a star, and was clinging onto it as the tracking moved a bit (obviously it was unable to tell the Mount to follow as no cables yet).  Anyway, I had lined up M13 to do with the DSLR afterwards, and there it was on my laptop looking really good, so I thought as LX seemed to be working (for a change) I might as well grab some images while the going was good.  Did around 10 x 40 sec subs.

Imagine my annoyance when I found that WXA captures in Fits files (which also look as though they are zip files), something I have never had any experience with), and neither Photoshop, not DSS would recognise I had any files.  But there they were if you go into Explore.  I tried a number of programmes to open these files, but unable to open them, and in the process they got changed in turn to the various programmes I tried to open them in.  Went into HELP which gave me two suggestions on how to extract the files, a) double click (which just opened the programme that couldn't open the files), or b) right click and select Extract files, but this option never came up.

Both DSS and PS are supposed to be able to open Fits files, is it because they are zipped?
Very annoying.

Does any-one have any suggestions?

Carole

[mickw]

Try this to unzip your files - It's free and it works.
http://www.jzip.com/

[Carole]

Thanks for sorting this for me in the pub Mick, as you know I was right clicking on the Icon instead of the list of files.  Such a simple thing once you know.

Will now try to look at those files.  Not sure if I got anything anyway because the screen went white shortly after starting, wasn't sure what this meant or why.  Don't think I'll use that programme for capturing again.

Carole