Image Plate Solve Script

[Andres.Pozo]

  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.

For "EPOCH" I ask for the date of the image. This is the same value as the "epoch" in StarGenerator. I will add a tooltip to clarify this.

[Andres.Pozo]

I have published a new version of the script in this thread:
http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3966.msg27736#msg27736
It has important changes that should increase the number of solved images.

[troypiggo]

I just selected local catalogue and pointed it to my local ppmx.bin file, but when I ran the script it still seemed to download a vizier one?

[pfile]

I just selected local catalogue and pointed it to my local ppmx.bin file, but when I ran the script it still seemed to download a vizier one?

i am seeing the same thing. also a bug report/support request is posted in the thread talking about the annotation script.

[Andres.Pozo]

I have published a new version in the thread of ImageAnnotation:
http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3966.msg27950#msg27950

[jeffweiss9]

Came back to use this but it doesn't seem work for me any more.  With default local database, showing stars shows it picks (x's) all the bright stars in my m51 image, but 974 others, mostly dubious.  It ends up not finding any putative star pairs. I tried it with different coordinates as well as with other posted m51 images and always get the same results.  (Other databases likewise).
Any suggestions what I'm doing wrong? 
Thanks,
-Jeff

-Thought it might be v1.51 but went back to another computer with 1.01 and got the same error message on an image that I know worked previously, although the local database file seems to be missing in 1.51 on one machine but not the other with the same results.

-I can still no longer get this to work with ANY of my images, including ones that it worked fine on before.  Has there been some change in the Align.matherTolerence or other parameter recently.  Is anyone else now having trouble getting it to solve again?

[Andres.Pozo]

[...]Any suggestions what I'm doing wrong? 
[...]Has there been some change in the Align.matherTolerence or other parameter recently.  Is anyone else now having trouble getting it to solve again?

I have not made changes to this script in the last month. Also, I think that Juan has not changed anything in StarAligment that could affect.

You can follow some of the following tricks:

• First of all, delete all the previews. If there is a preview in the image StarAlignment only uses the stars in the preview for the matching.
• You need a good approximation to the resolution of the image or the coordinates of the center. You need at least one of them. Usually the resolution of the image is easier to know but you must not forget to take into account any rescaling of the image.
• ImageSolver is only a thin wrapper around StarAlignment. SA is designed to work with lineal images and it doesn't work so well with stretched images. Because of this, you could try to solve the original image before stretching it. If it has the same geometry as the final image, you can copy the coordinates to the final image using the FITSHeader process.
• If working with the lineal image is not an option, you can try to smooth the image using a convolution (ie: StdDev=3 or higher) and try again. This should reduce the noise of the image and SA will detect less false stars. After this you can use FITSHeader to set the coordinates to the original image.
• When the image is very deep, there are lots of saturated stars that StarAligment ignores. You can multiply the image by 0.8 without rescaling and then smooth it using the procedure of the previous trick.
• If you have a galaxy of nebula in the center where ImageSolver detects many fake stars, you can define a preview outside the problematic area. This preview must be as big as possible and big enough to have at least 100 detected stars.
• If everything fails, you can try to find the coordinates of the center manually. Find a star in the center of the image and search it in a star map. I usually use wikisky.org. This star must be as close as possible to the center of the image. With a good approximation to both the center and the resolution of the image, the script is usually capable to solve any image.
  

If you still can not solve you image, I would like to see it.

[jeffweiss9]

Thanks so much, Andres-
  Late last night I managed to get it to work by primarily by increasing the magnitude of the stars used from 12 to 14.  From your points below that would make sense since it is a fairly deep, stretched image that you can see at (double click on it to get downloadable one):

http://www.astrophotogallery.org/member-galleries/p9493-m51-lrgb.html

Although I haven't yet gone back to try it on the previous ones which were subs for this image, I presume they would require the same modification, although they were linear, non-stretched. 
   Also another key thing (probably obvious) was that ImageSolver did not work on this image directly (the posted JPG, or 16 bit TIF from Photoshop that I use for printing at home and posting jpg's).  In fact, it wouldn't work when I just saved a new FIT file from the TIF I got back into PI from Photoshop.  To get it to work,  I had to go back to the original FIT file from PI 1.7 that was used to generate the posted image made in Photoshop. The images are nearly identical (but full-frame with less cropping) but presumably even the remade "FIT from TIF" doesn't support or contain the WCS, or other FIT headers needed by ImageSolver and the annotation script.

 I believe that I had the coordinates (for m51) correct and image resolution/scale correct from the previous successful solutions, and I think with this image of almost 8 hours of integration time that it shouldn't have been noise that created problems, so I am puzzled why the stars display seemed to show so many +'s that didn't appear to be connected to stars in the image.  Nonetheless, when it finally worked using an ORIGINAL FIT and using mag 14 stars, the result gave identification (with all the databases turned on) to almost all the visible galaxies and other objects (except for the 2 little edge-on's near m51B that must not be in any database).  In ALL cases the markings were right on top of the features visible in my (full frame) image so it looks there was no significant distortion that might have been causing troubles.

Thanks again.
-Jeff

[Andres.Pozo]

Thanks so much, Andres-
  Late last night I managed to get it to work by primarily by increasing the magnitude of the stars used from 12 to 14.  From your points below that would make sense since it is a fairly deep, stretched image that you can see at (double click on it to get downloadable one):

http://www.astrophotogallery.org/member-galleries/p9493-m51-lrgb.html

I have been able to solve the JPEG from the link that you have posted:

Code: [Select]

===============================================================================
Referentiation Matrix (Gnomonic projection = Matrix * Coords[x,y]):
        -0.000349080686     +0.000079332176     +0.210712369645
        -0.000079452584     -0.000348867409     +0.261692330810
        +0.000000000000     +0.000000000000     +1.000000000000
Resolution ........ 1.288 arcsec/pix
Rotation .......... -12.798 deg
Focal ............. 1440.83 mm
Pixel size ........ 9.00 um
Field of view ..... 31' 36.5" x 25' 1.0"
Image center ...... RA: 13 29 51.519  Dec: +47 12 26.15
Image bounds:
   top-left ....... RA: 13 31 06.328  Dec: +47 28 06.71
   top-right ...... RA: 13 28 04.137  Dec: +47 21 04.07
   bottom-left .... RA: 13 31 38.317  Dec: +47 03 41.99
   bottom-right ... RA: 13 28 37.445  Dec: +46 56 42.57
===============================================================================I had to do a little preprocess on the image:

• Convert it to 32bits
• Inverse stretching using a midtones of 0.96 for "relinear" the image.
• Convolution with stddev of 3.

I used as starting point a resolution of 1", the coordinates that the catalog returns for M51 and a sensitivity of 0.25.

[jeffweiss9]

Thanks, Andres-
  Those three steps also worked for the TIF image back from PS that I was trying to annotate.  However, when I undid them sequentially to get back to my original image, the WCS information also vanished, of course, so AnnotateImage wouldn't work on it. Not sure I see a way out of this conflict but it would be nice to be able to use these great scripts to annotate finished images as well as plate solve linear subs.  Any suggestions?
-Jeff

[FunTomas]

Hi Jeff. You can create annotation as transparent image and combine it with processed image.

[Andres.Pozo]

Thanks, Andres-
  Those three steps also worked for the TIF image back from PS that I was trying to annotate.  However, when I undid them sequentially to get back to my original image, the WCS information also vanished, of course, so AnnotateImage wouldn't work on it. Not sure I see a way out of this conflict but it would be nice to be able to use these great scripts to annotate finished images as well as plate solve linear subs.  Any suggestions?
-Jeff

The easiest solution is using the FISTHeader process:

• Select the solved image and open the FITSHeader (FH) process.
• Click on the "check" button in the lower tool bar. This makes FH to read the keywords of the image.
• Save FH to an icon dragging the blue triangle to PI desktop.
• Undo the changes until you return to the finished image. Open the FH icon and apply it to the image.

If you solved a copy of the image, you can drag the keywords from one image to the other without needing to save them to an icon.

[jeffweiss9]

Thanks very much, Andres,Tomas-
Clear skies,
-Jeff

[cbradshaw]

[/quote]
The easiest solution is using the FISTHeader process:

• Select the solved image and open the FITSHeader (FH) process.
• Click on the "check" button in the lower tool bar. This makes FH to read the keywords of the image.
• Save FH to an icon dragging the blue triangle to PI desktop.
• Undo the changes until you return to the finished image. Open the FH icon and apply it to the image.

If you solved a copy of the image, you can drag the keywords from one image to the other without needing to save them to an icon.
[/quote]

I'm unable to get the FH process to allow me to drag the keywords from the solved image to another image.  Is there something I'm missing?

Charlie

[Andres.Pozo]

The easiest solution is using the FISTHeader process:

• Select the solved image and open the FITSHeader (FH) process.
• Click on the "check" button in the lower tool bar. This makes FH to read the keywords of the image.
• Save FH to an icon dragging the blue triangle to PI desktop.
• Undo the changes until you return to the finished image. Open the FH icon and apply it to the image.

If you solved a copy of the image, you can drag the keywords from one image to the other without needing to save them to an icon.

I'm unable to get the FH process to allow me to drag the keywords from the solved image to another image.  Is there something I'm missing?

Both methods (saving to an icon and copying from one image o another) work for me in Win7 64bits. I don't know why it is not working for you. Perhaps, you could try to deactivate the checkbox of the "Track View" button just before dragging.