OK, I think I know why the PlaneWave plate solver in APT didn’t work the other
night. It thinks my Celestron C6 f10 scope has a focal length of 400mm!! If
it’s using that, I can understand why it couldn’t solve the problem. I’ll try
it again tonight (weather permitting!) and see if it works better with the
correct focal length.
But in the meantime, I installed All Sky Plate Solver
(http://www.astrogb.com/astrogb/All_Sky_Plate_Solver.html) for “blind” plate
solving. I downloaded all of the indices that it says I nee for my 1500mm/3.8um
imaging setup. Then I tried it to see if it could figure out that I was pointed
at Orion, using one of my L images from the other night. It couldn’t. So I
followed the Settings Assistant’s instruction to upload the image to
Astrometry.net and have it solve the location. I did that, it succeeded.
http://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/2698663#annotated
I then entered the resulting 0.504 arctic/pixel and the Settings Assistant
calculated my focal length to be 1555. So we updated the settings with the more
accurate focal length and reran the solver. It still can’t figure it out!
Anyone have any experience with ASPS or have an idea what I’m doing wrong? Too
many stars? Too saturated? Too much gas? Idiot user?
Mike McDonald
mikemac@xxxxxxxxxxx
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