Reference Frames

Sequence Generator Plate Solving
1

Sorry if this question is too basic but I am having questions about plate solving from a reference frame.

I use a ccd camera on an AP 900 mount and SGP works fine with my equipment. Since I have a permanent observatory with an internet connection, I have chosen Astronmy.net as my plate solver. The solver works fine if I populate the target data from my astro-bin images but, I want to be able to center on a target from any .fit image I may have in my computer.

  1. Does the reference .FIT image have to be taken with SGP? If it does, how do I acquire it and where should I save it?
  2. How do I tell SGP to populate the image position from the reference frame?

Thanks for any help. I would just use astro-bin images but I have a limit on how many of those I can upload. When I tried using someone’s else image, the scope slewed to never never land.

2

There’s a few ways to do this. What I would do:

  1. Open the .fit image in SGP (File/Open Image)
  2. Right click anywhere in the image, choose “Plate Solve”
  3. Plates solve the image using your default plate solver, or blind solve.
  4. When the solve completes a dialog window will pop up. Make sure to
    tick “Use these results as the reference image for target”. This will
    populate the target coordinates etc. into the target settings.
3

Another way is to search for your target DSO at Astrobin.com and find your favorite framed target image and copy the Astrobin’s url address. Open SGP’s Target Settings window and click on “Populate from web link (AstroBin, Flickr)” link and paste Astrobin’s url address there and you should be set to go from there.

Peter

4

Thanks Joel. That works!