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Nereid, the third largest of Neptune’s moons (mag. 18.69) and Minor Planet Christophe
#11
(2021-10-08, 06:23 PM)PMSchu Wrote: Hi Dennis,

It looks like you recorded your exposures around midnight on Oct 3, but the ST4v chart that I posted was for Oct 5 23:54, two days later.  Here's the predicted motion from Oct 3-6: 

Again from the Bathhurst Observatory. I need to add the location that you posted for the future.

Have you uploaded your image to Astrometr.net? They can plate solve it & ID the MPs detected. I've used it to platesolve some images taken with iTelescopes.

Here's a link to the web based site:

Astrometry.net

Good luck,

Phil S.

Hi Phil

Thank you for following up, it has given me the opportunity to correct a mistake I have made - the images were indeed taken on 5th Oct and NOT the 3rd Oct. Blush

The original image sets are on my Notebook and when I processed the data and transferred the finished TIF to my Desktop PC, I mistakenly labelled the in-coming Folder as 3/10/2021 and I have therefore carried that Date transcription error forward throughout my posts above. Sad

Having gone back to the source FITs files on the Notebook, I discovered this error and have now overlaid an ST4 Screen capture, as set for 5th Oct 13:00:00 UT, and it EXACTLY places Christophe correctly on the individual Frame exposed at 13:00:00 UT.

Please accept my apologies for this transcription error, in particular to Greg whose SW proved to be accurate and reliable, performing flawlessly, despite my efforts to break it. Sleepy

Cheers

Dennis

   
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#12
Wow, Dennis! That's fantastic. Nicely done indeed.

Have you checked out astrometry.net?

Phil S.
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#13
(2021-10-09, 04:39 PM)PMSchu Wrote: Wow, Dennis! That's fantastic. Nicely done indeed.

Have you checked out astrometry.net?

Phil S.

Hi Phil

I did upload an image file, but it just sat there, trying to process the file for over 1 hour and did not return a result. I have used it before and usually get a result in a couple of minutes, so I'll try again. Smile

Cheers

Dennis
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#14
I've had the same issue with astrometry.net
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#15
(2021-10-10, 01:13 AM)bigmasterdrago Wrote: I've had the same issue with astrometry.net

Ahh, thanks BMD, I'm not loosing it then - good to know. Smile 

Cheers

Dennis
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#16
It looks like it might be possible for me to send images to a version of astrometry.net installed locally on your computer, which would be more convenient and reliable. But I am not at all certain about the legalities. Open source programmers can be incredibly snobbish when it comes to people like me, who make a living from software development. They often consider us evil. The rules often don't make any distinction between, say, Microsoft, and a small developer.
Clear skies,
Greg
Head Dude at Skyhound
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#17
Greg,

That could be incredibly useful to astro imagers. ST4i already has an excellent catalog of star positions + proper motions. Could the ST4 catalog work with the astronomy.net software to perform the plate solving? How about identifying MPs too? (Not asking for much am I ;-) .)

Phil S.
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#18
Greg, please consider supporting more than a local astrometry.net as a plate solver. The preferred solver these days is ASTAP (much better in terms of ease of installation, speed and overall capabilities) as well as PixInsight for imagers. I am an imager as well and have used both extensively. Years ago I did have a local astrometry.net installation as well and tried ANSVR, AstroTortilla and the like and while I'm grateful people have developed that software at the time, the world has moved on since that time.

In terms of licensing, I'm not a lawyer, but there are other commercial apps that integrate with multiple plate solvers, such as SharpCap Pro. Packaging a solver would indeed complicate matters, but integrating with a separate installation is preferred anyway (allowing for independent updates, particularly that some are updated very frequently) what those apps do. A lawyer or a conversation with the authors would clarify this anyway.

Phil, the integration of plate solving & the interactive atlas is at the core of what I was asking at https://skyhound.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=2177. In the meantime, ASTAP does annotate MPs as mentioned earlier in the thread; Tycho Tracker does as well (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0XhUAkK3R8).

Hope this helps,
Razvan
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#19
I think a distinction needs to be made between simple plate solving, for which the algorithm used in astrometry.net is still absolutely king, and astrometric plate solving. These are two different things. I presumed from the context that people were asking about a general plate solution rather than to do astrometry. SkyTools is primarily planning software. The ability to match your images to the data is useful, but it is not going to become a full astrometry engine. There is existing software for that, and if it writes the plate solution in a standard way to FITS, then SkyTools can use it.

I'm not sure about ASTAP, but all of the other astrometric engines use the astrometry.net code to calculate the "rough" position as a starting point because it has the unique ability to match any set of stars at any scale.
Clear skies,
Greg
Head Dude at Skyhound
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#20
(2021-10-10, 11:56 PM)PMSchu Wrote: Greg,

That could be incredibly useful to astro imagers. ST4i already has an excellent catalog of star positions + proper motions. Could the ST4 catalog work with the astronomy.net software to perform the plate solving? How about identifying MPs too? (Not asking for much am I ;-) .)

Phil S.

Maybe. I don't really know, but for licensing reasons you would likely just install the thing on your computer separately, along with its own data sets, and then SkyTools would submit images to it to be plate solved. I wasn't suggesting adding astrometry to SkyTools... that is a separate app. I was just trying to find a way around the server issues people are experiencing.
Clear skies,
Greg
Head Dude at Skyhound
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