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Sky simulator and ASTAP problems

2020-06-09
2020-06-09
  • AlcorSoftware

    AlcorSoftware - 2020-06-09

    Hi Han,

    First, thanks a lot for creating both these tools, they are superb!! I have been using the Sky simulator extensively for a new project, it is a great tool for testing image capture sessions. But I do have problems integrating/testing ASTAP into my project, as it rather too often fails to solve the images DSS2R images generated by the Sky simulator. I can't really see why, and Platesolve2 solves the image I uploaded here in less than a second (so the fits coordinates are spot on, as expected for a simulator). Do you mind having a look why this particular image won't solve? I would much rather use ASTAP as it directly gives the matrix to convert x,y to RA,DEC in the image, which I need to identify the star I am looking for in the image,

    Thanks, Mikael

     
  • han.k

    han.k - 2020-06-09

    Hello Michael,

    I'm glad the sky simulator is usefull to you. Normally I use the simulated sky since it is much faster.

    The DSS2R images go pretty deep.

    Note that ASTAP tries find the star patterns of 4 stars close to each other. So if it is full of stars and small field it needs to go deep in magnitude to find identical pattern or you have to reduce the number of stars detected to less then 500 for small fields.

    The image you provide doesn't solve with the G17 but it does with the G18 star database. An other way to fix it is to limit number of stars in ASTAP from 500 to e.g 200 or even 100. then it will solve with the G17. This setting is in tab Alignment. Save it after changing or just hit the solve button to save this setting.

    Clear skies, Han

     

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