Plate Solving - Unleash the Power of Your Telescope!

Have you mastered your GOTO astrophotography mount? Have you set up remote control from a computer? If so, you might be ready to learn about Plate Solving. This incredibly powerful technique is surprising easy to use, and unleashes the true power of your astrophotography equipment. Better still, it usually costs nothing!! This tutorial covers:

- What is Plate Solving?
- What are the benefits of using Plate Solving?
- What hardware is needed?
- What Software is needed and what is the best Plate Solver to use?
- How to download and install the best Plate Solver
- How to set up your image acquisition software for Plate Solving (SG Pro example)
- How to use Plate Solving in your imaging session

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Clear Skies!

Closing Music Credit : Bensound - 'Dreams'

[eduardobrandao]

The informations on this video are exactly what I was looking for. Thanks a lot!

[AstroDork]

Oh how I wish I had found this video when I bought my first scope... or even if I had heard someone mention plate solving.... as it is a silver bullet to one of astronomies most tedious routines... star alignment Gaghhh. It's fiddly to get it set up and learn to trouble shoot but utterly utterly worth it. Why wouldnt we use a computer to 'look up' out scopes pointing coordinates.

Love your videos Martin. I have dyslexia and ADD so despite being bright I learn in a very patchy (my wife says obsessive) way. I'm just canning through your videos and filling little gaps in my knowledge everywhere. Thank you so much
(Y)

[dwaynekambrook]

once again- another superb tutorial. Thanks Martin.

[SpacePlan]

Fabulous tutorial. I’m taking my first tentative steps into plate-solving and was a little mystified as to what ‘sync’ actually meant and did. You’ve explained it perfectly if I’ve understood correctly i.e. it provides an exact reference point for associated software to know where the scope is actually pointing.

[edjones]

Just in the process of getting plate solving working myself ! Brilliant to show the whole process many thanks!

[bedfordbeds]

Great session Martin, probably the best...it is the only one that has clearly explained plate solving and synchronising the mount. Well done

[sahrealsound]

You've sorted out so many of my problems in one video Martin - fantastic and thanks !!
Shame I couldn't see you do the focus bit ! Much appreciated

[RigoFromSpain]

Hi Martin, nice to be back, love you're tutorials, thx

[dlep]

Thanks Martin, your tutorials are very completed and plate solving is a very great progress for the astrophotography.

[roland]

Thanks for walking through the actual sequence with the hardware and software. It's like being there with you. Very helpful.

[patlopez]

Thank you. Your explanation is very detailed, very clear, and very helpful!

[warrenhill]

Thanks Martin, another excellent presentation. I'm not at the level where i require plate solving at the moment, but very interesting and will revisit when i am.

[OutlandishJourneys]

Another excellent tutorial! Detailed, relevant but straight to the point…perfect balance! Nice job…😀

[glennschiffer]

Excellent video, do the programs work with a mirrorless camera and without wi-fi because I will be taking my eqm-35 pro out in the field.

[Daniel_DP]

now its Beta 4.5 available, the final could be comming soon! maybe you can make then a fresh video about SGP! thank you for this video ;-)

[dionisiochavez]

Superb tutorial, thanks a lot! I have a question though, does plate solving accounts the image orientation produced by the scope and camera? The image in the refractor is inverted.

[adamcarpenter]

Great video! Never did have any luck getting ASTAP to work for some reason but All Sky Plate Solver has been great so far. You do need some horsepower to run it though and in my on testing it takes anywhere from 5-15 seconds on my 6-core i7 8700k home PC to solve and 10-30 seconds on my astro PC which is an older 4-core mobile i7 processor. As long as it works I don't mind waiting :)

[MaranParanormal]

I have another question long time does it take for you to start a session after the balancing/polaralign etc with this method?

[MarvelousLXVII]

Martin, yet another excellent tutorial. I FINALLY got my computer working with my HEQ5 last night and of course, it's cloudy lol. I can't wait to put this to practical use. Does the initial plate solve basically also let you know your camera's orientation? I use a DSLR.

[NomenNominandum]

There is yet another thing one can do with plate solving and that is polar alignment (e.g. with EKOS, N.I.N.A., iPolar).