HelioFITS Peek

Quick Look plugin for FITS files

Solar FITS files, rendered as the Sun: in the right instrument colormap, with real coordinates, right where your data already lives.

Get it on the Mac App StoreFree · macOS Direct downloadNotarized zip · macOS · 1.5.1

Source on GitHub HelioFITS Studio

Thumbnails on every .fits icon
Press Space for an interactive preview: pixel values, coordinates, region stats
Telescope, instrument and wavelength searchable in Spotlight
A viewer with the full header and a ready-to-run sunpy snippet

Free and open source · no account · no network access

Cite this software

Gilly, C. R. (2026). HelioFITS Peek (Version 1.5.1) [Computer software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23749496

This DOI covers every version and resolves to the newest. To cite exactly the version you used, version 1.5.1 has its own: 10.5281/zenodo.23902201.

@software{gilly_heliofits_peek,
  author = {Gilly, Chris R.},
  title = {{HelioFITS Peek}},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Zenodo},
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23749496},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23749496}
}

HelioFITS Peek previews solar FITS files in Finder and Quick Look. HelioFITS Studio is the full desktop application for working with coronagraph and wide-field solar imagery.