Can't annotate my image in Pixinsight... any advice?

[Rudy Pohl]

Hi There,

I rarely annotate images in PI, but up until today I was able to get them all completed successfully. Today all my attempts have failed and produced an error message which says:

*** The image could not be solved.
This is usually because the initial parameters are too far from the real metadata of the image.

I have doubled checked the RA and Dec coordinates, clicked and unclicked most of the option buttons and boxes, and changed the magnitude limit a few times, all to no avail.

Can anyone offer any suggestions regarding what else I might try to get this working?

See the attached jpeg file.

Thanks very much,
Rudy

[Andres.Pozo]

The magnitude filter seems to be too low for a 1600mm image. Use the automatic value or try to increase it. Depending of the density of stars I think a value between 10 and 12 should be ok.

[Rudy Pohl]

Hi Andres,

I tried every magnitude setting up to 24 but no luck.

Do you have any other ideas about what I might try?

Thanks,
Rudy

[Andres.Pozo]

In your screen capture it says that the script has not found stars in the catalog. This can happen when the magnitude filter is too low or when there is a problem in the catalog server. Since you have already tried changing the magnitude filter, you could try with another catalog server. You can change the server clicking in the icon right to the catalog selector.

If you put the image somewhere I can access (dropbox or similar) I can analyze it.

[Rudy Pohl]

Hi Andres,

Thanks so much for taking the time to do this for me. Here is the link to the image file in my public Dropbox folder: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yq5u30r7n9xndml/Needle%20galaxy%20.jpg?dl=0

Cheers,
Rudy

[Andres.Pozo]

The coordinates that you are using are way off. Try with these:

• RA: 12 36 06
• Dec: 26 01 21

If you use as starting coordinates the values in the Wikipedia page for NGC4565 it also works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_4565

[Rudy Pohl]

Good grief, I checked those coordinates in Stellarium and thought I had them correctly!! I'm still pretty new at all this so there is lots of chances for me to make mistakes.

Thanks a million for doing this Andres, I really appreciate it. This is actually not for me, but for a friend who needs it for a presentation to his astronomy club here in Canada so he'll be very happy about this.

Best regards and have a great day!
Rudy

[copello]

Hi Rudy,

another simple approach to get the right initial coordinates and also focal len. & arcsec/pix is
http://nova.astrometry.net
Just upload your image there and wait for a couple of seconds. I did that exemplarily for your image and attached the resulting screenshots.

Cheers
 Thomas

[Rudy Pohl]

HI Thomas,

Thanks so much for doing this. I will check it out later today, it looks great!

Cheers,
Rudy