THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2013 AT 8:16AM
How to configure and plate solve using PinPoint Astrometric Engine with iTelescope FITS Data.
Articles by Maciej Reszelski
PinPoint Astrometric Engine, is a programmable engine that provides sensitive, robust, high-speed research-grade astrometric image processing for FITS files produced by astronomical CCD cameras.
Typically its uses include plate solving which gives precise pointing to telescope mounts, for asteroid and comet searching, supernova hunting and high-precision astrometry (detection and measurement of positions).
You may also use it with your iTelescope data. Just follow the few steps below. In this example we will use the T20 Utah remote telescope.
(above) Use iTelescope LaunchPad link (see inside red circle) to go to the website info page for the itelescope you wish to use for imaging session.
Now we have data about telescope and CCD. Let’s check resolution field (see below). This is one of critical values needed in the PinPoint Configuration. Other values will be read by PinPoint from the image's FITS header.
Now open Visual PinPoint and fill this information into Horiz and Vert Scale in Solve Settings as follows:
We are now ready for our plate solve. Just click into ‘Solve Plates’ tab click to add files or drag & drop them here and click ‘Solve Plates’.
The resulting output is given as a TXT file and is shown in the image below. You have a successful solved plate!
More Soon..