Plate solving software

[pc387]

Just came across this thread on the ICEINSPACE forum.

May be of Interest?

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=151933

[JimT]

I use this site, quite good and easy to use:

http://nova.astrometry.net/upload/

 

Jim

[Marci]

They’re both actually the same thing.

More or less all Plate Solving software out there at the moment all points back to the astrometry.net online API or a local install of their indexes to do the actual solve. So in essence, they’re all as good as http://nova.astrometry.net/upload/ (which is their own web-based interface to their own API).

If you’re a *nix-derived kinda person (Linux, BSD, OSX), it’s simple enough to install the entire astrometry api and libraries locally (see http://astrometry.net/doc/build.html#build) and then be able to plate solve in the field straight off your camera with just a raspberry pi. (A Pi3 has enough headroom to be able to plate-solve every sub in the background whilst still guiding & capturing & providing mount control).

'All Sky Plate Solver' is a wrapper for the above for non-*nix-derived folk (ie: for Windows).

When installing it should pop up and ask what indexes you want to install...

TIP: Use Field of View Calculator | BBC Sky at Night Magazine to work out your FOVs for your various combinations of equipment, and download the index files which cover those FOVs (otherwise if you select all of them you’ll be downloading about hundreds of Gb of data unnecessarily).

[Davey-T]

Bit reading material here.

Dave

http://www.gb.nrao.edu/MetConf/talks/Tuesday/Wallace.pdf