Plate Solving

Plate solving, once enabled, is automatic. But for good results, you need to first calibrate the system.

Checklist

Use a steady mount for the device
Set your location
Ensure the stars are in focus. See the focussing guide for tips.

Choose a familiar part of the sky

You should be able to easily recognize constellations and asterisms in that part of the Sky.

Enter the LiveView mode and bump up the ISO and lower the Exposure time as much as possible, while ensuring that bright stars are easily visible. Ideally, the brightest stars should be saturated (appearing fully bright on the screen).

Start calibration

To start calibration, pause the capture and then select Menu -> Calibrate.

Step 1: Set the margin

Margin Specifies a space around the borders of the image. Anything outside this margin will be cropped out and ignored.

This is useful to eliminate trees, buildings and other terrestrial objects, so as to reduce the chance of false positives during star detection.

A margin of about 5% is typical and recommended.

Step 2: Calibrate the FOV

An overlay of constellations, stars and other objects will be shown on top of the detected objects.

Try to match the overlay with the detected objects. When the system is able to recognize the pattern, it will say Matchable.

Now, click Auto-Tune to let the system figure out the exact match.

After Auto-tune is successful, click Save

Enable Live Plate Solving

After calibration, enable "Live Solving" to solve images as soon as they are captured.

Ensure that the capture settings are similar to the capture settings that were used for calibration. This restriction may ease in a future version, but as of version 0.9, please use similar settings.

The solution is only visible as an overlaid map for now. More details like RA, Dec will be shown in a later release.

SkEye Cam