SOLVE-FIELD(1)

💫 SOLVE-FIELD(1) 💫

okay bestie, gather round, because this is the main character of the astrometry.net fam — it's from the astrometry.net</author> manual, section 1, and it is the high-level command-line user interface. yes, THE one. 🎀

🌸 NAME 🌸

solve-field — the main high-level command-line user interface. she does it all. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

solve-field [options] [image-file-1 image-file-2 ...]  [xyls-file-1
xyls-file-2 ...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so basically: this is the main high-level command-line user interface for astrometry.net. the moment. 👑

and here's the tea — you can specify http:// or ftp:// URLs instead of filenames. the "wget" or "curl" program will be used to retrieve the URL. convenient? yes. iconic? also yes. 🫶

the astrometry engine will take any image and return the astrometry world coordinate system (WCS), ie a standards-based description of the (usually nonlinear) transformation between image coordinates and sky coordinates with absolutely no "false positives" (but maybe some "no answers"). it will do its best, even when the input image has no or totally incorrect meta data. like... she tries. she always tries. 😭💖

💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -h, --help — print the help message
• -v, --verbose — be more chatty. repeat for even more verboseness (yes she can talk MORE)
• -D, --dir directory — place all output files in the specified directory
• -o, --out file — name the output files with this base name
• -b, --backend-config file — use this config file for the "astrometry-engine" program
• --config file — use this config file for the "astrometry-engine" program
• --batch — run astrometry-engine once, rather than once per input file
• -f, --files-on-stdin — read filenames to solve on stdin, one per line
• -p, --no-plots — don't create any plots of the results
• --plot-scale scale — scale the plots by this factor (eg, 0.25)
• --plot-bg file — set the background image to use for plots (JPEG)
• -G, --use-wget — use wget instead of curl
• -O, --overwrite — overwrite output files if they already exist
• -K, --continue — don't overwrite output files if they already exist; continue a previous run
• -J, --skip-solved — skip input files for which the 'solved' output file already exists; NOTE: this assumes single-field input files
• --fits-image — assume the input files are FITS images
• -N, --new-fits file — output filename of the new FITS file containing the WCS header; "none" to not create this file
• -Z, --kmz file — create KMZ file for Google Sky. (requires wcs2kml)
• -i, --scamp file — create image object catalog for SCAMP
• -n, --scamp-config file — create SCAMP config file snippet
• -U, --index-xyls file — output filename for xylist containing the image coordinate of stars from the index
• --just-augment — just write the augmented xylist files; don't run astrometry-engine.
• --axy file — output filename for augment xy list (axy)
• --temp-axy — write 'augmented xy list' (axy) file to a temp file
• --timestamp — add timestamps to log messages
• -7, --no-delete-temp — don't delete temp files (for debugging)
• -L, --scale-low scale — lower bound of image scale estimate
• -H, --scale-high scale — upper bound of image scale estimate
• -u, --scale-units units — in what units are the lower and upper bounds? choices:
  • "degwidth", "degw", "dw" — width of the image, in degrees (default)
  • "arcminwidth", "amw", "aw" — width of the image, in arcminutes
  • "arcsecperpix", "app" — arcseconds per pixel
  • "focalmm" — 35-mm (width-based) equivalent focal length
• -8, --parity pos/neg — only check for matches with positive/negative parity (default: try both)
• -c, --code-tolerance distance — matching distance for quads (default: 0.01)
• -E, --pixel-error pixels — for verification, size of pixel positional error (default: 1)
• -q, --quad-size-min fraction — minimum size of quads to try, as a fraction of the smaller image dimension, default: 0.1
• -Q, --quad-size-max fraction — maximum size of quads to try, as a fraction of the image hypotenuse, default 1.0
• --odds-to-tune-up odds — odds ratio at which to try tuning up a match that isn't good enough to solve (default: 1e6)
• --odds-to-solve odds — odds ratio at which to consider a field solved (default: 1e9)
• --odds-to-reject odds — odds ratio at which to reject a hypothesis (default: 1e-100)
• --odds-to-stop-looking odds — odds ratio at which to stop adding stars when evaluating a hypothesis (default: HUGE_VAL)
• --use-source-extractor — use Source Extractor rather than built-in image2xy to find sources
• --source-extractor-config file — use the given Source Extractor config file. note that CATALOG_NAME and CATALOG_TYPE values will be over-ridden by command-line values. this option implies --use-source-extractor.
• --source-extractor-path file — use the given path to the Source Extractor executable. default: just 'source-extractor', assumed to be in your PATH. note that you can give command line args here too (but put them in quotes), eg:

--source-extractor-path 'source-extractor -DETECT_TYPE CCD'.

this option implies --use-source-extractor.

• -3 RA, --ra RA — RA of field center for search, format: degrees or hh:mm:ss
• -4 DEC, --dec DEC — DEC of field center for search, format: degrees or hh:mm:ss
• -5 degrees, --radius degrees — only search in indexes within 'radius' of the field center given by --ra and --dec
• -d, --depth number or range — number of field objects to look at, or range of numbers; 1 is the brightest star, so "-d 10" or "-d 1-10" mean look at the top ten brightest stars only.
• --objs int — cut the source list to have this many items (after sorting, if applicable).
• -l, --cpulimit seconds — give up solving after the specified number of seconds of CPU time
• -r, --resort — sort the star brightnesses by background-subtracted flux; the default is to sort using acompromise between background-subtracted and non-background-subtracted flux
• -6, --extension int — FITS extension to read image from.
• --invert — invert the image (for black-on-white images)
• -z, --downsample int — downsample the image by factor int before running source extraction
• --no-background-subtraction — don't try to estimate a smoothly-varying sky background during source extraction.
• --sigma float — set the noise level in the image
• -9, --no-remove-lines — don't remove horizontal and vertical overdensities of sources.
• --uniformize int — select sources uniformly using roughly this many boxes (0=disable; default 10)
• --no-verify-uniformize — don't uniformize the field stars during verification
• --no-verify-dedup — don't deduplicate the field stars during verification
• -0, --no-fix-sdss — don't try to fix SDSS idR files.
• -C, --cancel file — filename whose creation signals the process to stop
• -S, --solved file — output file to mark that the solver succeeded
• -I, --solved-in file — input filename for solved file
• -M, --match file — output filename for match file
• -R, --rdls file — output filename for RDLS file
• --sort-rdls column — sort the RDLS file by this column; default is ascending; use "-column" to sort "column" in descending order instead.
• --tag column — grab tag-along column from index into RDLS file
• --tag-all — grab all tag-along columns from index into RDLS file
• -j, --scamp-ref file — output filename for SCAMP reference catalog
• -B, --corr file — output filename for correspondences
• -W, --wcs file — output filename for WCS file
• -P, --pnm file — save the PNM file as file
• -k, --keep-xylist file — save the (unaugmented) xylist to file
• -A, --dont-augment — quit after writing the unaugmented xylist
• -V, --verify file — try to verify an existing WCS file
• --verify-ext extension — HDU from which to read WCS to verify; set this BEFORE --verify
• -y, --no-verify — ignore existing WCS headers in FITS input images
• -g, --guess-scale — try to guess the image scale from the FITS headers
• --crpix-center — set the WCS reference point to the image center
• --crpix-x pix — set the WCS reference point to the given position
• --crpix-y pix — set the WCS reference point to the given position
• -T, --no-tweak — don't fine-tune WCS by computing a SIP polynomial
• -t, --tweak-order int — polynomial order of SIP WCS corrections
• -m, --temp-dir dir — where to put temp files, default /tmp

🌈 the following options are valid for xylist inputs only 🌈

• -F, --fields number or range — the FITS extension(s) to solve, inclusive
• -w, --width pixels — specify the field width
• -e, --height pixels — specify the field height
• -X, --x-column column-name — the FITS column containing the X coordinate of the sources
• -Y, --y-column column-name — the FITS column containing the Y coordinate of the sources
• -s, --sort-column column-name — the FITS column that should be used to sort the sources
• -a, --sort-ascending — sort in ascending order (smallest first); default is descending order

note that most output files can be disabled by setting the filename to "none". (if you have a sick sense of humour and you really want to name your output file "none", you can use "./none" instead.) 😭 the audacity honestly

💜 AUTHOR 💜

the Astrometry.net team. principal investigators are David W. Hogg (NYU) and Dustin Lang (CMU). legends, fr fr. 👑

🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

http://astrometry.net

okay that's the whole page bestie, no cap, every single flag accounted for 💅 and for the sign-off: this is version 0.56 from July 2015 — yeah she's a little vintage but she still ate and left no crumbs. 🎀✨