Image Plate Solve Script

[Andres.Pozo]

Hi

Still can not make this work 

Any other ideas 

Harry

Please, check that the epoch is correct.

If you think everything is ok, please upload the image anywhere so that I can study what is happening. I will need the starting coordinates and the details of the optical system.

[Harry page]

Hi

Do you need a fits file ?


Harry

[Andres.Pozo]

Do you need a fits file ?

A JPEG is enough, but it should have the full resolution.

[Harry page]

Hi

Here we go take your pic

http://www.harrysastroshed.com/Temp.html

Thanks for looking

Harry

[Andres.Pozo]

I have achieved to solve it. It has been quite difficult because StarAlignment detects more that 14000 stars in the image.
The trick is to un-stretch the image to get a "pseudo-lineal" image. Doing this StarAligment detects less stars. Also I think that StarAlignment usually works better with lineal images. You could try with the original lineal image.

This image is very deep (congratulations!!) and for getting good results with this script probably would be necessary to use a bigger catalog than PPMX.

Code: [Select]

Image Plate Solver script version 1.2
===============================================================================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
        -0.000027916896     -0.000375223214     +0.465230287671
        +0.000375253137     -0.000027957121     -0.661236173004
        +0.000000000000     +0.000000000000     +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 1.35 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... 85.744 deg
Focal ............. 1370.43 mm
Pixel size ........ 9.00 um
Field of view ..... 1d 23' 14.4" x 49' 46.9"
Image center ...... RA: 09 55 19.951  Dec: +69 23 23.46
Image bounds:
   top-left ....... RA: 10 00 27.599  Dec: +68 43 26.66
   top-right ...... RA: 09 59 35.455  Dec: +70 06 33.29
   bottom-left .... RA: 09 51 21.024  Dec: +68 39 51.68
   bottom-right ... RA: 09 49 52.839  Dec: +70 02 44.08
===============================================================================


[vicent_peris]

Hi,

I'm having problems with the plate solving of the Orion image. Really it's not a problem of the plate solving itself... The problem is that the geometric distortions are not well modeled. Here you have the annotated JPEG where TYCHO-2 stars up to 9 mag are marked.

There is an additional problem: the lens was not exactly perpendicular to the image sensor. So the geometrical distortions are not symmetric from the center of the image.

Can the standard WCS routines compensate these distortions? And can this be inserted in the FITS header?


Regards,
Vicent.

[Andres.Pozo]

Can the standard WCS routines compensate these distortions? And can this be inserted in the FITS header?

The specification is in this PDF: http://fits.gsfc.nasa.gov/wcs/dcs_20040422.pdf

The script is quite simple and all the heavy lifting is done by StarAligment. The key for this is if StarAlignment could model the distortions in a compatible way.

[Harry page]

Hi

Thanks for doing this I will have a go some other images of mine 

Thanks for your great work


Harry

[Harry page]

Hi

Still struggaling to get this to work with a lot of my images  , what star catalog do you recomend for use to improve things 

Harry

[Andres.Pozo]

Hi

Still struggaling to get this to work with a lot of my images  , what star catalog do you recomend for use to improve things 

Harry

Currently the script is based on StarGenerator and it only supports the catalog PPMX. I think that Juan is thinking in improving it.

[jeffweiss9]

Andres-
    Your ImageSolver script is a terrific tool and works great and quickly on all the finished images I've tried it on. Thanks very much for putting all this work into it.
     I have found, however, that if I wanted to use this in the field on subimages with my (XP) laptop that, even after calibration, it can take a very variable amount of time with a large number of trials.  In particular, if you mistype so the input coordinates are out bounds, the script hangs up the entire computer badly until 10 or 15 minutes later when it either actually gets a solution or, more likely, gives up with an error message.  My question is: can the script poll for a click on the PI process window ABORT button often enough so that the user can STOP the script quickly if it obviously is going off into hyperspace to struggle for a solution, probably through an input typing error?  Or maybe it is always going to be too much of a computing load to use in the field while real-time mount and camera control software operating at the same time with critical time-response requirements.
   Thanks very much.
Clear skies,
Jeff

[Andres.Pozo]

My question is: can the script poll for a click on the PI process window ABORT button often enough so that the user can STOP the script quickly if it obviously is going off into hyperspace to struggle for a solution, probably through an input typing error?  Or maybe it is always going to be too much of a computing load to use in the field while real-time mount and camera control software operating at the same time with critical time-response requirements.

First, you have to reduce the priority of PixInsight from "TimeCritical" to "Normal". For an unknown reason Juan keeps releasing versions using "TimeCritical" as the default priority. I don't know if that is ok in Linux, but it is a BAD choice for Windows. For changing this value you have to open "Edit | Global preferences | Parallel processing and threads" and set "Maximum thread priority" to "normal". This change avoids PixInsight hoarding the whole computer.

After this, it should possible to abort the process although sometimes you have to press the Abort button several times. If you keep having problems, please post again so I can know that there is a problem.

[Andres.Pozo]

Harry, Jeff,

I have been doing several tests and it seems that I get better results if a couple of parameters in StarAlignment are used with their default values.

If you have time you could do this test:

Comment or delete the lines with the following text:

Code: [Select]

      align.matcherTolerance = 0.01; //0.0030;
      align.ransacTolerance = 6.00;
They should be the lines 961 and 962.

Please, let me know if the script behaves better with this change.

Thanks in advance.

[bitli]

I have tried the script with a couple of image (with the lines commented as stated earlier) and it worked very well for me, even on a picture with a cluster on it.  Very impressive, thanks.
-- bitli

[jeffweiss9]

Hi, Andres-
  I put PI to normal priority and commented out those two lines and that seems to have done the trick.  I can interrupt the process with the abort button (some times takes a second click) and continue it and I'm getting good rapid convergence on the single subs that I tried.
  Even better, it converged just about as rapidly on an UNCALIBRATED sub that hadn't been dark-subtracted or flat-fielded with a few dust motes in it.  No problem, evidently, so that is really great.
  I do have an additional question, however, on what exactly is asked for as "EPOCH".  I probably was 'raised' on GOTO scopes (doing astro  4 years only) without worrying about this but is this the EPOCH of the database from which I input the RA/DEC coordinates or something else like the date of the image?  I was thinking it would need both to do the job and, until now, was entering the date of the image.  Today I found it didn't matter, as far as I could tell, whether I entered the date of the image (16Feb2012) or the EPOCH of the coordinate base from TheSky6 Pro which I believe is 1Jan2000.
  Thanks again.
-Jeff