National Aeronautics and Space Administration

fv is built and distributed as a standard component of the large HEASOFT package of programs for manipulating and analyzing FITS data files, but you can also download the latest version of the fv binary executable by itself from this page.

Versions of fv are available for Linux and Mac OS X, and an older version is still available for Windows PCs (we hope to be able to offer v5.5.x for Windows in the near future). In each case the distribution is completely self-contained and includes several sample FITS files that can be used to explore fv's capabilities.

For information about Hera, please visit the Hera web page, and visit the Student Hera web page for more information about the Hera interface designed for students and teachers.

If you experience problems using the following FTP links to download this software, click here for instructions on downloading fv using 'HTTP'.

Linux

Download the PC Linux (64-bit) tar file. To unpack it, type:

   > gunzip -c fv5.5.2_Linux.tar.gz | tar xf -

   (Note that your browser may have unzipped this file for you already,
    in which case it will have the suffix ".tar" instead of ".tar.gz").

This will create a fv5.5.2 directory containing a platform-specific directory (pre-compiled binaries and libraries used by fv), associated documentation, sample data, and sample scripts. Once unpacked, fv can be run immediately; either add the fv5.5.2 directory to your executable PATH environment variable, or 'cd' to that directory and then type './fv'.

macOS

Download the macOS disk image and double-click the file to mount it. Once the image mounts, open it, and drag the fv icon (and/or Hera icon) onto your hard disk, e.g. into your Applications folder.

To start Fv double click on the fv icon or type open -a fv from the command line. Note that the X11 graphical environment must be installed in order to use Fv. See for example the XQuartz home page for more information.

Windows PCs (Version 5.3 only)

Windows users should download this self-extracting executable file (7.3Mb). Once you've downloaded the file, double-click on it to launch InstallShield, which will guide you through the installation process. If you leave the "Create a desktop icon" option checked, the fv installation will produce three icons on your desktop: one for regular fv, and one each for Hera and Student Hera.

A distribution of the latest FV source code (or binaries) is available via the standard HEASoft downloads here.