Plate Solving with AA5

[Forum_2015]

Hi
I have been using AA4 and now AA5 for many years to acquire images and autoguide.

I want to start using AA5 scripting and plate solving etc. to help me automate my imaging.

To start with I tried loading an image taken with my QHY8 3000 x 2000 pixel camera which has 7.8um square pixels. My scope is a Celestron NexStar 11 with a 2800mm focal length so I set the Horizontal Field to 28.8 arcminutes +/- 10% and maximum rotation of 60 degrees.

I then tried to use Tools:find coordinates to find the coordinates of the image. Each time it returned an error dialog saying "Cannot find coordinates for this image"

When I used the tools:find stars function it detected 10 stars as specified.

When I tried using Star Atlas I got an Star Atlas dialog saying "Insert disk GSD D:\GSCdata\. As I purchased AA5 as a download I don't have a disk, is this what is wrong?

I would greatly appreciate some advice on what I am doing wrong.

Thanks
Ian

[Forum_2015]

your purchase email should have the download location of the gsc catalogue. Download it, set the location of the catalogue in AA's preferences and you should be OK....

just did this myself.

cheers
Gary

[Forum_2015]

Hi Gary,
Thanks for the info. I checked my upgrade purchase email and it had all the passwords etc. but there was no download link for the GSC. I have emailed Fabio to ask for this.

Will the fact that I don't have the GSC set up, stop the Plate Solving and Find Coordinates function working?

Thanks
Ian

[Forum_2015]

Hi Gary,
Apparently I didn't need the GSC to get the Find Coordinates function working but Fabio sent me the link to it anyway.

I eventually found that the image was left-right flipped which must be due to the way the camera reads the chip as I have an SCT with the camera mounted on a straight through focuser.

Many thanks for your help
Ian

[Forum_2015]

Good morning

I am also new to AA5 and i'm having problems with the find coordinates feature. I am using a refractor and wonder how to flip the image, both ways?? i have tried every way possible and would love to know how you do it.

Thanks

[Forum_2015]

Good morning everyone

thanks to Fabio's recommendation, the find coordinates feature does work pretty well if the stars are not saturated to where the function cannot locates the stars' centroid. In preferences, one can lower the the detection parameters such as SNR, ADU levels, etc.. to be more successful at plate solving.

I have have the best luck while imaging to expose for 5 seconds at binning 2x2 with a luminance filter, plate solving is so fast you start to wonder if it is really doing anything

Thanks everyone