How to interpret astrometry.net output

[irtuk]

On AstroNoodles thread on first images Iapa suggested processing a picture from your rig in it's polar aligned home position to check your alignment. As it happens I had such an image from the other night and the processing has come back with this:

Astrometry.net submission 4459787

Erm, what does it all mean??

Ed.

 

[StevieDvd]

I don't think it helps too much as a single platesolve. I doubt it could tell you if you were polar aligned or not. Did you upload a fits image or jpg/png? Only the fits format would have any technical position data embedded.

To polar align using platesolving needs at least 2 solves to work out how far out your polar axis is from what it should be. Let's say we assume the software does the first solve to capture your first image, and when you goto the next target it should be perfectly aligned, if it then does the next solve and the co-ordinates don't match it knows you are not aligned correctly and calculates the error (offset) from what it should be.

So for the single upload to be useful it would need to know what co-ordinates the image was supposed to be and compare that with the actual solved image.

Well that's my simple explanation, the full process may be a little more detailed 😀 and I would be happy to be corrected if I've got anything wrong.