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themos

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Everything posted by themos

  1. Gonzo, I had tried the py2exe in Windows but it was quite fragile and ultimately didn't work. We rely on quite a few packages (numpy, scipy, ujson, PIL, astropy)
  2. Yes, the difference of .06 arcminutes I can well imagine being due to residual flexure.
  3. Is there anything like Inno Setup for OSX? A free, easy-to-use tool for installing OSX apps? I see https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/installer.8.html is available always. If you know enough to hack an installation script, that would be great.
  4. Andy, I have a separate Python for PHDLabs (in C:\Python2.7). There may be a way of using that one, once all the needed packages are added, but it's not straightforward. On the issue of timestamps, I am now trying out this definition def happy_with(self, wcs, img): ''' check that .wcs (wcs) is compatible with .jpg (img) ''' import os from os.path import exists if exists(wcs): if os.stat(wcs).st_mtime> os.stat(img).st_mtime: return True return FalsePerhaps you can try it in place of the existing function.
  5. Hello Andy, I suspect the issue is the logic I use to make sure that the .wcs files are newer than the images. When you copy files, the timestamps the operating system records (and that PPA sees) get changed. You can see the timestamps if you right-click on files and select Properties, select Details tab and scroll down to "Date created" and "Date modified" times. Could you tell me these for the 2 files on the source machine and the destination machine please?
  6. Hello Stevie, I've been thinking along the same lines. In my view, if you think a particular solve is taking too long, I would just abort the whole program and have a look at the image. There's very little chance of losing any work done as any previously solved files show up with a green "Solved". You gradually get a feel of what "too long" is. Local solves on my machine take about 6 seconds, for example. I am planning on having two configurations for local and adding a radio button to switch between the two (one for "do the most general thing", one for "here's a bunch of hints, I'm in a hurry"). I think AstroArt will work but you have to do a bit of work: save a JPEG file (as "img_01.JPG", say) and then rename the solved FITS file as "img_01.wcs". If this works well for people, I could finetune the process and have people just point to the AstroArt solved FITS file. Themos
  7. Thanks Stevie, that looks like a tolerable error, I am not sure I could do better. I am right-handed, so I stand east of the mount, looking north, and to turn the polar axis right, I need to turn the east azimuth knob clockwise (having loosened the west one). I should probably measure how much angle a half turn buys me. I expect each person will make their own mental notes. Themos
  8. Thanks, that is useful. Let me know how you get on with AstroArt.
  9. Thanks Stevie, every little helps. If you can, open PPA.py in an editor and go to line 1305 and change it to # lfn = os.listdir(dir) lfn = []keeping the same indentation as before. That should allow you to carry on with the program. It will be interesting to see if AstroArt can work with PPA. You will need to save images as JPEG format and also save the plate-solved .fits file that AstroArt produces and rename it with a .wcs ending (so there would be, say, img2014.jpg and img2014.wcs files)
  10. This was from the weekend, 450D with 200mm lens, S resolution, about 10arcsec/pixel, showing the development version. And this is what PHDLab made of the subsequent session (note the Dithering spikes). PHDLab independently computed the polar alignment error at 0.61 arcminutes, matching PPA's estimate (to exceptional precision!).
  11. Well done Stuart! We had another go tonight and also got it under an arcminute with 4 iterations. Ended up with 17 flawless 5 min captures before clouds stopped play.
  12. Hello, here's an issue that is not handled at all at the moment: parity. All versions so far assume that the image is of correct parity, which is what happens when you use a camera+lens combination. If you use a reflecting telescope, things get complicated. The software will probably send you the wrong way, away from CP instead of towards it. To avoid this issue, you can prepare the images you submit so that they have the correct parity. Image editing software can be used to do this. You might have to "flip horizontal" or "flip vertical". Take a picture with the same optical train of a recognisable object and find out what flips you need to do to make the image have the same parity as naked-eye vision. A future version might be able to detect the parity of the images (the astrometry.net solver can do this) and correct for it. Themos
  13. Andy and D4N, I think we can take some of these issues off-line, can you email me with a note of what system you are on and what glitches you are experiencing? It's hard to keep track of stuff in this thread.
  14. Also, be aware that the nova.astrometry.net server goes "funny" sometimes and Dustin has to restart it. That's happened twice in the last week, I think.
  15. I am confused, if the label goes green it means there is a .wcs file around, corresponding to the selected image (unless I messed up the logic). So when was the .wcs file made? mystery!
  16. With the refresh issue, does it go away if, in the file-select dialog, you select the parent folder and then go back to the folder where the image file is? Also, if you have solved an image file (meaning there is a newer .wcs file there, no matter how it got there), the Solved label should show green and you don't need to solve it again. The mount can be tracking or not while you take the image. At the Celestial Pole, it doesn't make much difference. Just make sure you have good focus and lots of nice round stars! No, there is no difference to how we calculate the polar axis position between 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 Send me any images you fed to PPA, if you can. Themos
  17. D4N, that non-refresh is annoying. Sounds like a tkinter bug.
  18. Stevie, There's a few places in the code where I haven't put enough error recovery in. If the window disappears too quickly, I select Anaconda Command Prompt from the Start menu, I then change to the directory where PPA is installed, something like cd C:\Users\Administrator\Documents\PhotoPolarAlign and issue PPA.py Any error messages are then shown in that window. There is a known bug when running under Windows XP. I look for environment variable LOCALAPPDATA (it's ok on Windows 7), in order to find where the AstroTortilla settings are. That variable is not there under Windows XP, so the program gives up. I will fix that. Another known bug is I don't handle pathnames with spaces in it correctly. That will also be fixed.
  19. Hello D4N, Version 1.0.3 does this for Windows and Linux. If you're on a Mac, you can have a look at the code and see if you can adapt it, it would look much like the Linux case. Or you could just issue the solves from the command line and let PPA find the .wcs files and continue normally.
  20. Tried it with Canon DSLR (S setting, meaning Small) and a 480/80 refractor (about 4 arcsec/pixel). Took a few iterations to get to 0.3 arcmin error. It was quite repeatable.
  21. It shouldn't be affected but we'll have to see what happens in practice. If your image scale is quite fine, there may be issues. It's been tested quite a bit with image scales of 5 arcsec/pixel and above.
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