The StellarMate Plus Manual
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· BuiltIn Sextractor: This uses whatever method of source extraction the
solver uses by default. StellarSolver uses SEP, just like the Internal SEP
setting. Local astrometry.net uses its own source extraction method which
uses a bunch of external resources including python, netpbm and other
packages. And finally ASTAP has its own internal source extractor which is
pretty good.
Note: Either Internal SEP or External Sextractor should be superior to the built in
version of the programs. SExtractor is very good at extracting stars, and that
greatly speeds up solving, but it require tuning up the options to perfect it for
your optical train.
The Solver
The program that will be used to do the solving of the sources that were found. In
StellarSolver, there are 4 options for that
· StellarSolver: This option uses an internal library build of astrometry.net. It
uses no external files like configuration files etc, and saves no files to disk
(except 0KB solved and cancel files) which is great for Raspberry Pis. Since
this library is entirely internal, no programs have to be installed beyond
KStars itself, so if you are going to use this option, you don't need the
astrometry.net package at all. This is going to make a world of difference
for Windows users who cannot install astrometry.net unless they do it in a
compatibility layer.
· Local Astrometry.net: This option uses the good old fashioned local
astrometry.net installation many users have used with KStars for years. The
only differences in Stellarsolver are that we no longer need the
configuration files, we can do parallelization to make it MUCH faster, and
we can use Internal SEP or External Sextractor to give it the sources to
solve.
· Local ASTAP: ASTAP was available in KStars previously, but more options
have been implemented for using it in StellarSolver as well as giving you
the option to use Internal SEP or SExtractor with it. The options for ASTAP
are now shared with astrometry so you can just set your options in the
profile and it will work fine. ASTAP does NOT support parallelization.
· Online Astrometry.net: This option was previously available in KStars as
well, but a bunch of work has been done on it to make it work better, to
use Internal SEP or Sextractor if you like, to use the options in the profiles,
and to provide clearer feedback to the user about what is going on.
Technically, online Astrometry.net is already using parallelization on their
server, so there was no need to implement parallelization for it.
The Options Profiles
Here are the profiles that have been developed:
Profiles mainly for Solving:
1-FastSolving: solve images fast, but it does not do parallel solves.
2-ParallelSolving: It can be faster than FastSolving, but does not work nearly as
well as the next 2.
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