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 various Unix platforms (including Mac OS X), for Windows PCs, and for older versions of Mac OS. In each case the distribution is completely self-contained and includes several sample FITS files that can be used to explore fv's capabilities.

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

Unix Platforms

Download the tar file appropriate for your platform:

Linux PC

Sun Solaris

Digital/Compaq OSF

Mac Linux

These links will retrieve a gzipped tar file (roughly 3 MB in size). To unpack the file, type:

   > gunzip -c fv44_<ARCH>.tar.gz | tar xf -

where <ARCH> depends on the file downloaded. This will create a fv4.4 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 fv4.4 directory to your executable PATH environment variable, or `cd' to that directory and then type `./fv'.

NOTE to Users with fv installed as part of the HEASOFT software package:
If you want to replace the fv in your HEASOFT distribution with the newest version of fv, simply move (or copy) the contents of the untarred fv4.4/ directory into the $HEADAS/bin/ directory. You may want to move aside the existing $HEADAS/bin/fv to e.g. $HEADAS/bin/fv_old first since you will be copying in a new fv executable.

Windows PCs

Windows users should download this self-extracting executable file (11.3 Meg). Once you've downloaded the file, double-click on it to launch InstallShield, which will guide you through the installation process.

Mac OS-X

Download fv4.4_OS10.x.dmg.gz (or fv4.4_OS10.4_Intel.dmg.gz for Intel Mac users) then drag it onto Stuffit Expander to decompress it (Stuffit Expander may launch and decompress the file automatically). If the disk image doesn't mount automatically, double-click on the .dmg file to mount it. Once the disk image mounts, open it, and drag the fv icon onto your hard disk. We recommend that you copy it to the Applications folder.

To start Fv double click on the fv icon or type open -a fv from the command line. As with other Mac versions of Fv, the X11 graphical environment needs to be installed.

Select QUIT (command-Q) from the fv menu if the Quit button on the Fv interface does not work.

Older versions of Mac OS (before Mac OS X)

Users of previous Mac operating systems (OS-8, OS-9) should download the older Fv 3.0 executable here (1.9 Meg). The lastest version of fv is not supported on the older Mac OS. Decompress the file and run fv. An included AppleScript can be used to set files' Creator/File types so that they will be opened by fv when double-clicked. Use the "File Exchange" control panel to have the ".fits" (and other) filename extension(s) recognized as being a fv FITS file when moving files to your computer from PCs or downloading them from the internet. More details can be found in an included README file.

A source code distribution of fv 4.4 is now available here. Users should refer to the standard HEASOFT-INSTALL document for instructions on how to build HEASOFT source code distributions, specifically the section titled "STEP BY STEP INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS".