Blind Solver

[georg.viehoever]

hmm, on osx x86_64 i'm getting "exception caught in solveFile:TypeError: Console.execute is not a function"
...

Your observation is correct. I posted a bug report, see http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=2903.0.

Georg

[pfile]

cool, thanks.

didnt realize it was a 1.6.9 thing, figured it might have been os dependent.

[kwiechen]

This is very interesting. Are there any plans to make a module? I do not understand why it is not possible to use the GPL here.

Kai

[georg.viehoever]

No time to work on this. You may want to use the Solver/Annotation script that does something very similar http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3966.75 .
Georg

[kwiechen]

I have looked again at the astrometry.net code. The solve-field binary calls other programs to separate the positions of stars and writes a xy-list sorted by signal descending. This is written to a FITS bintable with some information in the header (image size and flags) and submitted to the backend binary that does the job.

I have tried to extract the xy-list using code from the the SubFrameSelector script and this should work. The xy-list is converted to a FITS bintable using a modified xylist2fits binary from the astrometry.net suite and then the modified backend is called using ExternalProcess. The output is collected via stdout and written to the FITS header. The process of extracting star positions with StarAlignment is time consuming because there is no access to the internal data table. And there is some overhead because PI is not able (??) to write and read FITS bintable data and the resulting wcs header.

In the current state the resulting data is unfortunately not compatible with the ImageAnnotation script but OK as a starting point for the ImageSolver script. In addition the binaries are linux only but it should be possible to use the cygwin dlls (the relevant C source files were tranfered to a cmake build tree - the project compiles with cygwin, but the backend is still not usable in a windows environment because of problems with wildcard expansion). I will do some cleanup and then post the files.

Kai

[Juan Conejero]

I plan on releasing a StarDetector process, which will fill this gap nicely. It will be available soon (perhaps it will be part of the final 1.8.0 release in February). This process is actually rather easy to write because all the necessary pieces already exist in StarAlignment and DynamicPSF. Just a bit of patience!

[netwolf]

Georg, Does your blind sovler script work with the Astrometry.net beta web portal? Or does it only work with a local copy?

I am not sure on the legal side of these things but would it not be possible to have ImageSolver have a link to nova.astrometry.net/upload  the beta web API for astrometry.net? I know sequencegenerator pro has this in there software so I am guessing it is ok to use this service in such a way.

[rleisenz]

i don't know if somebody mentioned it, there is a solution
called astrotortilla, which is also based on astrometry.net.
works like a charm on my computer.
http://sourceforge.net/p/astrotortilla/home/Home/

Robert

[georg.viehoever]

Hi Robert, Netwolf,
my script used a local copy of the Astrometry.net software - but this was long ago. Today PI has the ImageSolver script that will find a plate solution as long as you roughly know the coordinates of your image (kind of half blind). Plus it will handle distortions and more.

I know about AstroTortilla, but never tried it.
Georg

[netwolf]

Robert, yes I am aware of Astrotortila i did try to install it some time ago but had problems with it. Might give it another try.
I have Elburs installed for use with SGPro but that does not do blind solve.

Georg, yes I have tried the Imagesolver and can see it does link in with extenral websites , just wondering if this could be modified to use the nova.astrometry.net web portal, I think there is meant to be an API around this web portal to allow remote use.


Regards
Fahim