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A magical tool
I quite like taking wide-field photos of the sky; at Christmas I got
myself an iOptron SkyTracker, which is an equatorial mount the size of a chunky hardback and solid enough to support a DSLR body and 70-200/2.8 lens, and so expect many more better wide-field photos of the sky. However I keep finding that, whether because I'd screwed up the pointing entirely or because I'd forgotten what I was trying to take a picture of, I get a picture which is just an unidentifiable starfield. If you have such a picture, upload it at http://nova.astrometry.net and after a minute or so of crunching on their cloud you get back RA and Dec of the field centre, and a copy of the picture with the stars marked and constellation lines drawn on. It's amazing. Tom |
#2
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A magical tool
On 25 Jan 2015 23:28:27 +0000 (GMT), Thomas Womack
wrote: I quite like taking wide-field photos of the sky; at Christmas I got myself an iOptron SkyTracker, which is an equatorial mount the size of a chunky hardback and solid enough to support a DSLR body and 70-200/2.8 lens, and so expect many more better wide-field photos of the sky. However I keep finding that, whether because I'd screwed up the pointing entirely or because I'd forgotten what I was trying to take a picture of, I get a picture which is just an unidentifiable starfield. If you have such a picture, upload it at http://nova.astrometry.net and after a minute or so of crunching on their cloud you get back RA and Dec of the field centre, and a copy of the picture with the stars marked and constellation lines drawn on. It's amazing. Yes, it's a great astrometry tool. I normally use Pinpoint for astrometry, which has always needed to have a rough idea about plate scale and position. But the latest version calls the astrometry.net engine if it can't get an initial solve. I expect other astrometry tools do, or will also use this approach, since astrometry.net has an accessible API. (I also recently got a SkyTracker, which I'm really enjoying. It's been great for shooting Comet Lovejoy.) |
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