I setup and tear down each session (because Trees! 🌲🌳) and as such I don't always get a good pointing model. Normally I find my target galaxies etc and move about my night. Plate solving is good enough except when it comes to astrometry for MPC hunting. I found some tricks to help myself out that I thought I'd share my new approach!
- Use plate solve - the one that works with SGP to find J2000 center of plate
- Pay attention to the 'Angle'
- Inside the Astrometrica settings you might need to 180 the angle to 92 in my case
- Now, once that's done, manually input the J2000 from PlateSolve into the beginning step of your finding routine in Astrometrica
- If it still fails after 2-3 attempts, do a manual find:
- Lower the magnitude and search for bright stars
- Line it up, moving and rotating
- Then turn the magnitude back up and pay attention to the parameters you input in case it still fails you have a better starting point next manual run or use those to refine your settings
