Astrotortilla help needed.

[redfox1971]

Hi all i would like to use Astrotortilla with my Williams optics star 71 and my qyh8l ccd camera,i'm struggling with the calculations needed or maybe confusing myself as my maths skills are not great,I have followed lightvortexastronomy.com calculations best i can.I have the ccd specs image size as 3110 x 2030 and the scope field of view as 3.97 x 2.59 the widest index file i am choosing is 4214 would that be correct? and the narrowest with the 20% off to be index 4210?.The next problem is the scale min and scale max figures if i take my field of view figures 3.97 x 2.59 and divide each by 60 figure i get is 0.0661666 x 0.0431666 so would the figures to enter be 0.04 for min and 0.7 for max scale? astrotortilla don't seem to find a solution with these figures.Please could somebody check my figures out.

 

 

[Demonperformer]

My first question would be: 3.97x2.59 what? degrees? arc minutes? You can enter min and max in either, as long as you set the units right. I would simply set the units to those of the figures you are giving and then set max to 4 and min to 2 (or maybe 5 & 2 to allow for a bit of slack).

Not sure about the file numbers, as I downloaded everything due to having different systems.

[John78]

Just take one of you images taken with the setup in question, and solve it by uploading it here...

http://nova.astrometry.net/upload

It will tell you everything you need to know regarding the files to download and the settings to put in also.

[redfox1971]

Hello John78 i just give it a go image solved with index 4111 only thing is astrotortilla use the new index files 4200 up  how do i find the file that matches?

[John78]

Post up the solved link and I can tell you

 

[redfox1971]

Hi John78 hopefully this link will work thanks for your help and time. http://nova.astrometry.net/status/1244856

 

[John78]

So if you hit the results on that list it gives you...

http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1285739#annotated

Size:

3.86 x 2.56 deg

So 4212 and 4213 should be more than adequate, be sure to delete all of the *.fits files in this folder before you rerun the AT installer...

C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\data

Otherwise it will continue to scan through all of them and take rather a long while.  Those are also the settings for AT once its launched, I'd try max 3.87 and min 3.85 and then on the custom command line put this...

--sigma 100 --no-plots -N none -r --objs 100

See if it will solve then, you can solve offline images by connecting to the ascom simulator, then choosing tools->goto image

[Gina]

With that help I might just go back to using AstroTortilla, so thank you John   I used to find sorting out all the calculations difficult and confusing and frequently got it wrong, resulting in problems with plate solving and great frustration and lost imaging time!   So now I've got back into imaging after a couple of years break I just couldn't face AstroTortilla any more.  I have to say though that when I had things right AT was very good

[redfox1971]

Thanks very much John78 I shall input the information and see what happens.

[John78]

All credits to @Thalestris24 (Louise) - she sorted me out on how to get it working on a different thread, then I figured out once I'd got it solving that you needed to delete the un-needed FITs files which persist in cygwin folder.

[Gina]

Thank you to Louise then

[redfox1971]

Thanks Louise.

[Thalestris24]

You're welcome! 

[Skipper Billy]

I wouldn't necessarily delete the unused files - just move them to a folder called 'unused' or something similar - it saves  all that tedious downloading  if ever you want to use them in the future.