Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 11:45:29 -0700
From: "Kevin R. Boyce" <Kevin.R.Boyce@nasa.gov>

FITSLoad is an XOP to Load (and eventually to save) FITS files into (and eventually out of) IGOR.
It's based on CFITSIO, and so should automagically do various things like gunzipping zipped files, etc.
It is reasonably fast as long as there are no STRING (form A) columns in the file being loaded.
If there are strings, it gets unbearably slow. 
You can abort by holding down command-period (sometimes you have to hold it for many seconds). 
If WaveMetrics provides a faster way of inserting points into text waves, I will make use of it.
It adds the following operations to Igor:
FITSVersion, FITSLoad

CFITSIO is at

http://legacy.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/software/fitsio/fitsio.html

I'm using version 2.510.