I am trying to update a FITS table extension by appending some new columns to it. I am following the method given at http://pyfits.readthedocs.org/en/latest/users_guide/users_table.html#merging-tables. However, the header of the merged table contains only the bare minimum information required to identify the column. There was information in the original header file that I need. How can I carry all the extra keywords from the old table across to the new one?
I have already tried
merged_table.header = old_table.header
and adding in the necessary entries for the new columns manually, but this always corrupts the header and makes the entire FITS file unreadable.
Thanks