How To Find Comets

[shane shaw]

Hi there all I hope I am not telling everyone something that you all know about. I hope this is new for you all. Whilst searching the net and reading different sites I cam across this great piece of software called the PIXY SYSTEM 2........

http://www.aerith.net/misao/pixy/index.html

Seems that once you ahve this on your computer and you have a shot of some stars it compares different photos and can also tell you what stars you have taken a photo of and which ones are not on the catolog.


If anyone out there is using this or has used it please let me know how it is going or if there are any better programs out there then this.......

[Dennis]

Hi Shane

It looks like a very comprehensive piece of software.

I have dabbled a bit in the technique, although I use my CCD camera control software (CCDSoft) and the planetarium program The Sky 6 Professional to achieve something similar.

When I take a CCD image using CCDSoft, if I have used The Sky to point my ‘scope, then the RA and DEC coordinates of the frame centre are written to the image file. The image can then be linked to The Sky and the Sky will then produce an inventory of stars and asteroids (if any) recorded in the CCD image.

Cheers

Dennis

[leon]

Sounds, and looks very interesting, but a little to involved for me, I think, I will just stick to taking Pic's

Leon

[citivolus (Ric)]

If anyone has any trouble installing this, let me know. I had some trouble related to the .jar files that the application is dependent on, as they don't exist in newer versions of Java and the public download is no longer available from Sun as they EOL'd it. I contacted the author and he was able to help me get the files, so feel free to PM me if you would like them. I'm hosting the files on my server but have not posted a link as I am uncertain of the redistribution restrictions that Sun Microsystems would have in this case.

Regards,
Eric