Hi Steve, are you sure that the problem is just the matplotlib version?
The exception is raised within matplotlib itself while trying to import matplotlib.image: astropy/visualization/scripts/tests/test_fits2bitmap.py:27: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ astropy/visualization/scripts/fits2bitmap.py:138: in main power=args.power, asinh_a=args.asinh_a, cmap=args.cmap) astropy/visualization/scripts/fits2bitmap.py:72: in fits2bitmap import matplotlib.image as mimg /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/matplotlib/image.py:17: in <module> import matplotlib.artist as martist /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/matplotlib/artist.py:12: in <module> from .transforms import Bbox, IdentityTransform, TransformedBbox, \ """ from __future__ import (absolute_import, division, print_function, unicode_literals) import six import numpy as np from numpy import ma > from matplotlib._path import (affine_transform, count_bboxes_overlapping_bbox, update_path_extents) E ImportError: No module named 'matplotlib._path' /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/matplotlib/transforms.py:39: ImportError To me, this looks more that matplotlib-1.4.2 is buggy on kfreebsd. The script in question is unchanged since a year, and worked well with matplotlib 1.4.2 on linux-amd64 and others. What do you think?