Can't update data in a fits table

Hello, I asked this question in the wrong section previously. I’m trying to update a .fits file using astropy.io.fits. I do not have PyFits, I’m using astropy in its place. for the following code the contents of Qname are [‘003511.48-004918.0’ ‘003657.17-100810.6’ ‘005118.28+135448.1’ ‘011845.55+133327.2’]. However, this data was originally grabbed from a .fits file as follows

thdu = fits.open('dr7qso.fits')#raw information
tdata = thdu[1].data#gathering the data
name = tdata.field('SDSSJ')

name then rewritten into a numpy array and saved as Qname. In addition I have the following import at the start of my code,

from astropy.io import fits

c1 = fits.Column('sdss_name', format = 'A18', array = Qname)
c2 = fits.Column('Plate', format = 'J', array = Pl)
c3 = fits.Column('Fiber', format = 'J', array = Fib)
c4 = fits.Column('MJD', format = 'J', array = date)
c5 = fits.Column('OIIrew', format = 'D', array = OIIrew)
c6 = fits.Column('OIIfwhm', format = 'D', array = OIIfwhm)
c7 = fits.Column('OIIIrew', format = 'D', array = OIIIrew)
c8 = fits.Column('OIIIfwhm', format = 'D', array = OIIIfwhm)
c9 = fits.Column('z_dr7', format = 'D', array = reds)
c10 = fits.Column('ContPow', format = 'D', array = contPower)
c11 = fits.Column('OIIPow', format = 'D', array = OIIpower)
c12 = fits.Column('r', format = 'D', array = rMag)
c13 = fits.Column('g-i', format = 'D', array = giMag)
c14 = fits.Column('r-z', format = 'D', array = rzMag)

OIIrew = np.array(OIIrew, dtype = np.float64)
OIIfwhm = np.array(OIIfwhm, dtype = np.float64)
OIIIrew = np.array(OIIIrew, dtype = np.float64)
OIIIfwhm = np.array(OIIIfwhm, dtype = np.float64)
Qname = np.array(Qname, dtype = np.object_)
reds = np.array(reds, dtype = np.float64)
contPower = np.array(contPower, dtype = np.float64)
OIIpower = np.array(OIIpower, dtype = np.float64)
rMag = np.array(rMag, dtype = np.float64)
giMag = np.array(giMag, dtype = np.float64)
rzMag = np.array(rzMag, dtype = np.float64)
Pl = np.array(Pl, dtype = np.string_)
Fib = np.array(Fib, dtype = np.string_)
date = np.array(date, dtype = np.string_)

if(not(path.exists('new.fits'))):
    newhdu = fits.new_table([c1,c2,c3,c4,c5,c6,c7,c8,c9,c10,c11,c12,c13,c14])
    newhdu.writeto('new.fits')
else:
    fits.open('new.fits')
    fits.update('new.fits', Qname, 'sdss_name')
    fits.update('new.fits', Pl, 'Plate')
    fits.update('new.fits', Fib, 'Fiber')
    fits.update('new.fits', date, 'MJD')
    fits.update('new.fits', OIIrew, 'OIIrew')
    fits.update('new.fits', OIIfwhm, 'OIIfwhm')
    fits.update('new.fits', OIIIrew, 'OIIIrew')
    fits.update('new.fits', OIIIfwhm, 'OIIIfwhm')
    fits.update('new.fits', reds, 'z_dr7')
    fits.update('new.fits', contPower, 'ContPow')
    fits.update('new.fits', OIIpower, 'OIIPow')
    fits.update('new.fits', rMag, 'r')
    fits.update('new.fits', giMag, 'g-i')
    fits.update('new.fits', rzMag, 'r-z')
    fits.flush()
    fits.close()

and here is the traceback

raceback (most recent call last):

File "", line 1, in 
runfile('C:/Users/owner/Documents/.spyder2/fittingTest.py', wdir='C:/Users/owner/Documents/.spyder2')

File "C:\Users\owner\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\spyderlib\widgets\externalshell\sitecustomize.py", line 699, in runfile
execfile(filename, namespace)

File "C:\Users\owner\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\spyderlib\widgets\externalshell\sitecustomize.py", line 74, in execfile
exec(compile(scripttext, filename, 'exec'), glob, loc)

File "C:/Users/owner/Documents/.spyder2/fittingTest.py", line 854, in 
fits.update('new.fits', Qname, 'sdss_name')

File "C:\Users\owner\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\astropy\io\fits\convenience.py", line 525, in update
new_hdu = _makehdu(data, header)

File "C:\Users\owner\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\astropy\io\fits\convenience.py", line 772, in _makehdu
hdu = ImageHDU(data)

File "C:\Users\owner\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\astropy\io\fits\hdu\image.py", line 1011, in init
scale_back=scale_back)

File "C:\Users\owner\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\astropy\io\fits\hdu\image.py", line 138, in init
self.data = data

File "C:\Users\owner\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\astropy\utils\decorators.py", line 526, in set
ret = self.fset(obj, val)

File "C:\Users\owner\Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\astropy\io\fits\hdu\image.py", line 236, in data
self._bitpix = DTYPE2BITPIX[data.dtype.name]

KeyError: 'object'

Thanks, I really don’t understand where the issue is coming from

[SaOgaz]

Hi @csnap001, for this kind of question, you may have better luck asking on http://stackoverflow.com/ or another programming question website, as this is more of a general programming question and not an issue with the astropy library itself. The github issue pages are more geared towards bugs and or feature request.

[saimn]

Closing as there is no issue in astropy.io.fits here (I think). Note that for FITS table you have also the more convenient Table interface: http://docs.astropy.org/en/latest/io/unified.html#fits