Finding A Planet or the Moon with ASIAir

 

V1.5.3

I get a lot of reports from folks that ASIAir will not plate solve on planets or the moon.  The reality is that any object that moves against the stars cannot be plate solved.

Plate solving compares the field of view with recorded plates of known star positions to determine the exact position of the telescope.  An interloping planet or moon can mess up the ability to solve the location.  So what can we do?

The trick is to goto a nearby star or object that is in the asiair database.  This object should be within the same quadrant of the sky and as close as possible to your target.  For planets this is fairly easy.  Choose a star nearby and then do a platesolve and then sync the location.  If you have autocenter enabled then this will be done for you.  I recommend that for planets and the moon you disable goto autocenter and do the platesolve and sync manually.  Once the star goto has completed and has been solved and synced, goto the star again and make sure it it is in fact centered.  Then goto the planet thats nearby and the planet should be reasonably centered.

The process for the moon is the same but the brighter the moon is the more difficult it will be to get that nearby star platesolve completed.  As long as you can achieve a platesolve and sync on a star somewhere in the same quadrant as the moon or worst case same hemisphere as the moon you should get reasonably close.  Try different exposures or filters if the moon interferes with the platesolve.  

The idea here is that you really dont want to do your platesolve on the other side of the meridian from the target.