Astrotortilla question

[Jerry_K]

Even though I have Astrotortilla installed for almost 2 years now today was 1st time I have actually fired it up. The reason was that I have tried to shoot M8 and when I run the lights through DSS out came an mage with stars but no Nebula. Also it took over 30 minutes without plate solved. So I went to Astrometry.net and got results in under 1 minute. My question is how do you manage files that are in Cygwin? I think that I have DL too many of them, especially wide fields ones. How do I pick only .3 degrees to 4 degrees of FOV and junk the rest? Do I have to uninstall whole Cygwin and then install fresh batch? Help, please.

Jerry 

[astroman133]

Jerry,

 

The index files are in C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\data.  Astrometry.net will use whatever files are in that folder.  I downloaded all the index files, but for my setup I really only need 1 file.  What I do is to drag and drop the unneeded files to another folder.  I created a folder called C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\backup_data.  This is where the unneeded files are moved to.

 

Because both folders are on the C: drive a drag and drop operation will move the files, instead of copy them.  This is a good thing because the move operation is very quick.

 

Other things that I do are to set the Scale Minimum parameter to about 10% of my field of view and the Scale Maximum to about twice my field of view, so with a field width of 1.5 degrees I set Scale Minimum to 0.2 degrees and Scale Maximum to 2.5 degrees.  Then if I will be connected to my scope when I start a Capture and Solve, I set the Search Radius to 10.  That means that I expect the solution to be within 10 degrees of where the scope is pointing. If it is a blind solve with no scope connected, I set the Search radius to 179.  I leave the sigma value set at 100.

 

I hope that helps.

[Jerry_K]

Jerry,

 

The index files are in C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\data.  Astrometry.net will use whatever files are in that folder.  I downloaded all the index files, but for my setup I really only need 1 file.  What I do is to drag and drop the unneeded files to another folder.  I created a folder called C:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\backup_data.  This is where the unneeded files are moved to.

 

Because both folders are on the C: drive a drag and drop operation will move the files, instead of copy them.  This is a good thing because the move operation is very quick.

 

Other things that I do are to set the Scale Minimum parameter to about 10% of my field of view and the Scale Maximum to about twice my field of view, so with a field width of 1.5 degrees I set Scale Minimum to 0.2 degrees and Scale Maximum to 2.5 degrees.  Then if I will be connected to my scope when I start a Capture and Solve, I set the Search Radius to 10.  That means that I expect the solution to be within 10 degrees of where the scope is pointing. If it is a blind solve with no scope connected, I set the Search radius to 179.  I leave the sigma value set at 100.

 

I hope that helps.

It helped, Rick. However how do I know which is the one I need, there are lots of FITS files in there! My situation is about the same as yours when it comes to FOV. So, what do I move?

Thanks, Jerry

[dts350z]

Check the posts in the how to section of this site.

 

There are a couple of things about AT in there that I found helpful.

 

 

 

[Jerry_K]

Check the posts in the how to section of this site.

 

There are a couple of things about AT in there that I found helpful.

 

 

Thanks, I'll do that. I didn't notice these before.