What is a good source of test images that I can use to test my local install of Astrometry.net? Our weather has been so poor in Indiana this summer that I would like to spend some indoors verifying my Astrometry.net performance indoors to avoid wasting valuable clear sky time.
I would like to find a 8-10 images (0.8 arc-sec scale) to verify my solving.
Thanks in advance,
Fred K.
Fred,
How about using some subs from prior images you have taken?
Andy
Hi Andy,
Thanks for the suggestion. I have done some testing with previous subs,
but they were all shot at a much shorter focal length and image scale that
I am now shooting. I moved to SGP once I increased my focal length (AT 6"
RC). At 1300mm I found it was much harder to get objects on the sensor.
I have everything on SGP working pretty well, with the exception of Plate
Solving which is very slow or fails completely. I have been doing plate
solving using Astromety.net (local install).
Fred
I think I have finally been able to work through some of my plate solving issues. After reading through a number of posts on this forum I adjusted my settings and reduced the number of index files I was using for my local install of Astrometry.net. I then used images from the Deep Sky Survey downloaded for my field of view to test the plate solving with both Pinpoint and Astrometry.Net.
Both seem to be working now. I was having trouble testing with my own images, because I am a new to astrophotography and have very few good images to play with! The DSS images allowed me to do a lot of tweaking while indoors to improve the performance of the plate solver. I plan a real run on Wednesday night if our weather cooperates.
Fred