Sending Image Data Directly to Astrometry

[Nyki Anderson]

I am attempting to send image data directly from various PointGrey cameras to the local astrometry.net solver. I am a relatively green programmer so this is proving to be a complex task. Also, the camera's come with an API written in C++ so I am trying not to use python.

My current logic is that I will need to intercept an image trigger event from my camera and send the data buffer to either "qfits_image.c" or "image2xy.c" directly so the image data can be written to a fits file -though I am not sure how I should do that. I have been trying to trace when the image is sent to solve-field so that I can start there but I have had no luck.

Am I on the right track?

[Dustin Lang]

Hi,

Have a look at "blind/control-program.c".  It is an example program where we pretend to be reading FITS files, running image2xy on them, and solving them.  It may have a few other things you don't need, but it'll be a decent starting point for what you want to do.  You can replace the FITS file reading by an image capture from the camera.  There is nothing special about FITS files, they're just an astro-standard image format.

The solver itself only deals with x,y coordinates (xylists), so the image2xy part converts an image to an xylist by detecting stars in the image.

cheers,
--dustin