![]() Then the mount knows where the telescope is currently pointing and can “go to” where you ask it to point. The user then, for each star, makes a manual correction to point exactly to the star and the mount takes this correction into account, compensating for any alignment errors (no alignment is perfect!). Each mount manufacturer has a way to achieve this, most commonly by firstly polar aligning the mount and then automatically pointing to a set of (1,2,3 or more) stars. Why is this important / useful? There are various ways to ask your telescope mount to automatically point somewhere in the sky (Goto function). This is done by analyzing the pattern of stars in the image and matching it with known star catalogues. Today plate solving essentially means to analyze a digital astronomical image and figure out where exactly it points in the sky. Last night I tried for the first time the “Point Craft” feature of APT (the Astro Photography Tool) and I was amazed!įirst thing first, what is “plate solving” ? I guess the term “plate” comes from older times when astronomical images were taken using photographic “plates”.
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