image solver script date/time

tommy_nawratil

Well-known member
hello Juan,

could date/time in the image solver script possibly be made sticky?
Means, stays same like at last try if the script has tro be called up again. Not auto reset to y 2000.
Sometimes its not working at first attempt, and I have to tweak parameters.
Sometimes even have to re-linearize stretched pics, then it works better usually.
Keeping date/time would be just nice, I think it did that before in older versions.

thanks, Tommy
 
Hello,
it would also be useful to store focal length and pixel size in Photometric Color Calibration.
John
 
could date/time in the image solver script possibly be made sticky?

Of course that can be done, but it would be a bad idea. Providing actual observation dates (either through existing metadata or manually) is essential to compute valid astrometric solutions, since they are necessary to compute star proper motions. This is very important, especially in the latest versions of our ImageSolver script, where we have implemented a highly accurate distortion modeling algorithm.

The date is reset to a default J2000.0 value on purpose when the target image has no valid observation time metadata. Then when you try to execute the script, a warning is shown if you haven't defined a valid date and none has been found in the image. This 'forces' you to enter the actual observation date for the image to be plate solved. Without this, most people would just use J2000.0 (or whatever date we'd set by default), which is a serious error.

If you want to avoid this problem, include observation time metadata in your images, such as a valid DATE-OBS FITS keyword for example.
 
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