First Time Plate Solving

[Laurieast]

Just did my first ever plate solving, using All Sky Plate Solver, it was spot on in 80 seconds (Old Dell Inspiron). I was amazed at what this can do 😲

I have had APT for years, but just thought Plate Solving ...nah,  too difficult, what's that, but it's a doddle.

So I suppose the thing to do is use an image from the guide camera to figure out if I am on target with the target that I can't see. I often waste a lot of time getting something centred in the frame. 

Edited May 5, 2021 by Laurieast
Can't spell

[bottletopburly]

If your using Apt switch to Astap as it’s far quicker there is a tutorial here 

now you have platesolving working just use go to ++ , so platesolve and sync , use go to ++ choose an object and go to ++ will put the object in centre within a few pixels after a few moves 

[Malpi12]

7 hours ago, Laurieast said:

Just did my first ever plate solving, using All Sky Plate Solver,

Thank you ! Nice find, nice software. And me too ! I have just done my own first plate solve  

Just starting out with a Canon DSLR body on a tripod with an old (film slr) 50mm lens. Trying to get used to what I can see in the small camera screen was difficult and having to bring the card indoors to upload to Astrometry to solve was taking quite a time.

Now I can do it locally, thanks.👍

I got a bit confused with my pixels, and my focal length turned out to be not quite 50mm. But all was good in the end when I used the "Go to Astrometry"setup method with a frame I knew that Nova had solved good last week.

Edited May 4, 2021 by Malpi12

[smashing]

Plate solving is amazing!!

[MKHACHFE]

Once I managed to figure out plate solving, my AP sessions were much smoother. I used to rely on astrometry.net, but that can be very slow sometimes. 

To the member that suggested ASTAP, thank you, I will look into this.

To the OP, I'm glad you managed to get it working for you. Well done. I know it took me a while to figure it out 

 

Cheers