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

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.)