We are excited to announce the launch of our new forums! You can access it forums.aavso.org. For questions, please see our blog post. The forums at aavso.org/forum have become read-only.
Announcement: New Applications
We are excited to announce the launch of our new applications! We're opening up early access to our new applications for searching, downloading, and submitting photometric observations. You can now access these applications through these links:
We ask for your feedback in order to help us improve these applications. Please send feedback for the applications above to feedback@aavso.org. Note: please avoid duplicating submissions across the two submit applications.
Yes, VPhot has Pinpoint built in BUT as has been mentioned many times before, PLEASE make every effort to plate-solve locally on your own computer IF at all possible. It means the difference between queue processing taking about 5 sec vs 30+ sec per image. As you can imagine, if you upload hundreds of images, it slows down the queue significantly.
Most of our heavy users, plate solve before uploading (Thank You!). If you want the queue to slow down, ignore this message but please do not complain when the queue crawls along or even hangs when someone uploads poor images!
Yes, there are ways we could reduce the timeout and bump images more quickly. Reducing timeouts has been done twice already. However, during the creation of VPhot and for the many subsequent years, we have decided not to follow this alternative further. VPhot actually tries to plate-solve with three catalogs that work with images of different characteristics (e.g., small field of view, bright stars, crowded, sparse, faint stars). We continue to see that this works sometimes, not always.
Over the years, we have listened to our users and tried to balance the quick plate solution failure with the understanding that sometimes alternative catalogs need to be used to solve more problematic images. It has always been an imperfect compromise.
We continue to request off-line plate solving but note that we have not made that a requirement. Most of the time VPhot plate-solving works quickly with the first catalog and everyone is happy. I have felt that heavy users are usually very experienced and capable of plate-solving off line, and thus feel that this request imposes little hardship on them. It really does speed up the queue! At the same time, we continue to provide this internal tool to members who may not be able to do that for a variety of reasons.
I must have missed that part in class or maybe it wasn't activated back then, at any rate I always plate solve BEFORE uploading anyway, with Pinpoint, The Sky X and AstroimageJ , or all three at the same time if I have hundreds (Like I always do) of science images.
I must admit that I don't plate solve my images before uploading. They do have the target coordinates in the fit header. I find that 6 images uploaded as a zip file seem to be plate solved within about 5 seconds ie very fast. Is this unusual?
VPhot is prepared to plate solve and as long as you have a proper plate scale set in your telescope profile it goes pretty quick: 20-30 seconds.
If you are uploading a thousand files then it is courteous to plate solve in advance; it is a shared resource after all.
If you do upload a bunch of files needing solution, first do one to see that it is solving. It's a shame if you upload a couple hundred files, see them all fail and then have to upload them again. Plus it takes longer for VPhot to fail an image solution as it tries all the catalogs it has, often taking 50 seonds.
Yep all frozen..I guess I will have to resubmit?
Pablo
The PinPoint license has expired. I'll get that fixed today.
No need to resubmit; the queue is just sitting there, getting longer. It will start processing as soon as I get this fixed.
George
VPhot is back up and processing its queue.
Special thanks to Bob Denny for providing the DC3 PinPoint license for use by the astronomers of the AAVSO.
Cheers,
George
Thank you! Are you saying that we can plate solve in Vphot using a built in Pinpoint?
Hi Pablo et al:
Yes, VPhot has Pinpoint built in BUT as has been mentioned many times before, PLEASE make every effort to plate-solve locally on your own computer IF at all possible. It means the difference between queue processing taking about 5 sec vs 30+ sec per image. As you can imagine, if you upload hundreds of images, it slows down the queue significantly.
Most of our heavy users, plate solve before uploading (Thank You!). If you want the queue to slow down, ignore this message but please do not complain when the queue crawls along or even hangs when someone uploads poor images!
Ken
I've found that if Pinpoint can't solve an image within a few seconds it will never solve it. Perhaps the timeout can be reduced significantly?
Hi Geoff:
Yes, there are ways we could reduce the timeout and bump images more quickly. Reducing timeouts has been done twice already. However, during the creation of VPhot and for the many subsequent years, we have decided not to follow this alternative further. VPhot actually tries to plate-solve with three catalogs that work with images of different characteristics (e.g., small field of view, bright stars, crowded, sparse, faint stars). We continue to see that this works sometimes, not always.
Over the years, we have listened to our users and tried to balance the quick plate solution failure with the understanding that sometimes alternative catalogs need to be used to solve more problematic images. It has always been an imperfect compromise.
We continue to request off-line plate solving but note that we have not made that a requirement. Most of the time VPhot plate-solving works quickly with the first catalog and everyone is happy. I have felt that heavy users are usually very experienced and capable of plate-solving off line, and thus feel that this request imposes little hardship on them. It really does speed up the queue! At the same time, we continue to provide this internal tool to members who may not be able to do that for a variety of reasons.
That is where we stand at the moment!
Ken
Hi Ken
I must have missed that part in class or maybe it wasn't activated back then, at any rate I always plate solve BEFORE uploading anyway, with Pinpoint, The Sky X and AstroimageJ , or all three at the same time if I have hundreds (Like I always do) of science images.
Nice to know, but normally not needed by me
Pablo
Hi
I must admit that I don't plate solve my images before uploading. They do have the target coordinates in the fit header. I find that 6 images uploaded as a zip file seem to be plate solved within about 5 seconds ie very fast. Is this unusual?
Terry
VPhot is prepared to plate solve and as long as you have a proper plate scale set in your telescope profile it goes pretty quick: 20-30 seconds.
If you are uploading a thousand files then it is courteous to plate solve in advance; it is a shared resource after all.
If you do upload a bunch of files needing solution, first do one to see that it is solving. It's a shame if you upload a couple hundred files, see them all fail and then have to upload them again. Plus it takes longer for VPhot to fail an image solution as it tries all the catalogs it has, often taking 50 seonds.
Cheers,
George