Announcing Astrofiler 1.0

I’m pleased to announce that Version 1.0.0 of Astrofiler has been released on Github.

Astrofiler Astronomy File Management Tool

AstroFiler is a powerful application designed for astronomers and astrophotographers to efficiently manage, organize, and catalog their FITS image files. With an intuitive graphical interface, it provides tools for batch processing, file organization, metadata extraction, and session analysis.

✨ Features

File Management

• Repository Scanning: Recursively scan directories for FITS files, rename to a descriptive name, and move into a centralized repository
• Batch Processing: Process multiple files with progress tracking
• File Organization: Automatically organize files based on metadata
• Duplicate Detection: SHA-256 hash-based duplicate file identification
• Duplicate Management: Safely remove duplicate files while preserving one copy
• Command Line Utilities: Critical functions exposed as command line utilities to facilitate use of scripts and crontab

Metadata & Analysis

• Stats Page: Provides basic statistics on the files contained in the Repository
• FITS Header Extraction: Automatically extract and catalog metadata
• Object Identification: Track astronomical targets and sessions
• Date/Time Analysis: Organize by objects, observation dates, instruments, and cameras
• File Integrity: SHA-256 hashing for duplicate detection and verification

Tools & Integration

• External Viewer Support: Launch your favorite FITS viewer directly from Astrofile

Session Management

• Session Detection: Automatically group lights and calibration images
• Session Operations: Create, update, and clear session groupings
• Session Linking: Automatically link calibration sessions to light sessions
• Session Export: Export Lights and Calibration files ready for SIRIL processing

Future Versions

• XISF support: Load XISF files and extract FITS headers
• Processed Images: Support for processed images and formats (XISF, TIFF, JPG)
• Archiving: Saving images to Google Cloud Services, Dropbox, Amazon etc.
• Auto-Calibration: Calibrate any lights with calibration files (build masters first) with Siril
• Thumbnails/Sample Stacks: Use Siril to create stacked images, stretch, and create thumbnail

CAUTION. This software can make changes to your precious imaging data. The Load Repo function will rename your files and move them to a repository folder as specified in the config. If you select Save modified files in the config it will also write modified FITS headers to the data. Be sure that you have backups of your data. Due to the wide variation of FITS header data across the many image acquisition applications, the author makes no warranties either express of implied that this software will not cause issues with your data. Please test on a small subset of your data to ensure no issues arise before using in Production.

Complete documentation is on the Wiki at: https://github.com/g…ofiler-gui/wiki

Installation is as follows:

Windows
Install Git – There are also a few ways to install Git on Windows. The most official build is available for download on the Git website. Just go to https://git-scm.com/download/win and the download will start automatically. Note that this is a project called Git for Windows, which is separate from Git itself; for more information on it, go to

https://gitforwindows.org.

Once git is installed, you can open a powershell command line (run as Admin) and enter:

C:
cd \
Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope LocalMachine -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Force
git clone https://github.com/gordtulloch/astrofiler-gui.git
cd astrofiler-gui
.\install\install.ps1

Linux
In Linux you can install git from Debian distros via:

apt install git      # Debian distros
sudo yum install git # CentOS distros
cd $HOME
git clone https://github.com/gordtulloch/astrofiler-gui.git
cd astrofiler-gui
chmod +x install/install.sh && ./install/install.sh

macOS

There are several ways to install Git on macOS. The easiest is probably to install the Xcode Command Line Tools. On Mavericks (10.9) or above you can do this simply by trying to run git from the Terminal the very first time. NOTE: I don’t have a Mac to test so this installer may have issues.

git --version # If you don’t have it installed already, it will prompt you to install it.
git clone https://github.com/gordtulloch/astrofiler-gui.git
cd astrofiler-gui
chmod +x install/install_macos.sh && ./install/install_macos.sh

What the installer does:

• Checks for Python 3.8+ (installs if needed)
• Creates virtual environment
• Installs all dependencies
• Creates desktop shortcuts and application menu entries
• Sets up automatic update checking from GitHub
• Auto-Update Feature: Desktop launchers automatically check for and install updates from GitHub when starting AstroFiler (if installed via git clone).