astrometry.net 0.46-0ubuntu2 / usr / doc / README

Astrometry.net code release
===========================


NOTE NOTE NOTE
================================
Note: the (generated) documentation in doc/html contains more
up-to-date information.  A current snapshot of this documentation is
kept at http://astrometry.net/doc
================================
NOTE NOTE NOTE


Copyright 2006-2010 Michael Blanton, David W. Hogg, Dustin Lang, Keir
Mierle and Sam Roweis.
Copyright 2011-2013 Dustin Lang and David W. Hogg.

This code is accompanied by the paper:

Lang, D., Hogg, D. W.; Mierle, K., Blanton, M., & Roweis, S., 2010,
Astrometry.net: Blind astrometric calibration of arbitrary
astronomical images, Astronomical Journal 139, 1782–1800.
http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.2233

The original purpose of this code release was to back up the claims in
the paper in the interest of scientific repeatability.  Over the
years, it has become more robust and usable for a wider audience, but
it's still neither totally easy nor bug-free.

This release includes a snapshot of all of the components of our
current research code, including routines to:
  * Convert raw USNO-B and Tycho2 into FITS format for easier use
  * Uniformize, deduplicate, and cut the FITSified catalogs
  * Build index files from these cuts
  * Solve the astrometry of images using these index files

The code includes:
  * A simple but powerful HEALPIX implementation
  * The QFITS library with several modifications
  * libkd, a compact and high-performance kdtree library

In principle, the code in the tarball is sufficient to reproduce our
entire astrometry system and replicate our blind astrometry results
(e.g. on the SDSS fields).  However, this requires the entire USNO-B
1.0 catalogue which is about 80GB in size.  For ease of use, we are
distributing our pre-cooked index files (about 25 GB total), which are
the same files we're using for our web service.

INSTALLING
----------

The short version:

   make
   make extra
   make install  # to put it in /usr/local/astrometry
   # or:
   make install INSTALL_DIR=/some/other/place


The long version:

For full functionality, you will need:
  * GNU build tools (gcc, make, etc.)
  * pkg-config
      http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config
  * cairo
  * netpbm
  * libpng
  * libjpeg
  * libz
  * python (probably >= 2.4)
  * numpy
  * pyfits
      http://www.stsci.edu/resources/software_hardware/pyfits
  * cfitsio
      http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/fitsio/

-> On Ubuntu or Debian-like systems, the following should suffice:

    $ sudo apt-get install libcairo2-dev libnetpbm10-dev netpbm \
                           libpng12-dev libjpeg-dev python-numpy \
                           zlib-devel python-pyfits cfitsio-dev

-> On RHEL, you'll need something like:
    $ sudo yum install cairo.x86_64 cairo-devel.x86_64 netpbm.x86_64 \
                       netpbm-devel.x86_64 fontconfig-devel.x86_64 \
                       libXrender-devel.x86_64 xorg-x11-proto-devel.x86_64 \
					   zlib-devel libjpeg-devel

-> On Mac OS X, possibly the easiest way is to install Fink
   (www.finkproject.org), and then use apt-get install as per the
   Debian instructions above (leaving out "zlib1g-dev" because it's
   already included with OSX).  Note that to use Fink you will need to
   add something like this in your ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc file:

. /sw/bin/init.sh
export CFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include -I/sw/include"
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib -L/sw/lib"

-> On Mac OSX, "homebrew" seems to be the newfangled way to install
   stuff.  We currently have no experience with this, so any notes you
   have would be appreciated!

If you don't have and can't get these libraries, you should still be
able to compile and use the core parts of the solver, but you will
miss out on some eye-candy.

Grab the code:
  $ wget http://astrometry.net/downloads/astrometry.net-0.45.tar.bz2
  $ tar xjf astrometry.net-0.45.tar.bz2
  $ cd astrometry.net-0.45

Build the solving system:
  $ make

If you installed the libraries listed above, build the plotting code:
  $ make extra

Install it:
  $ make install

You might see some error message during compilation; see the section
ERROR MESSAGES below for fixes to common problems.

By default it will be installed in  /usr/local/astrometry .
You can override this by either:
     * editing the top-level Makefile (look for INSTALL_DIR)
  or * defining INSTALL_DIR on the command-line:
        For bash shell:
          $ export INSTALL_DIR=/path/to/astrometry
          $ make install
        or
          $ INSTALL_DIR=/path/to/astrometry make install
        For tcsh shell:
          $ setenv INSTALL_DIR /path/to/astrometry
          $ make install

The astrometry solver is composed of several executables.  You may
want to add the INSTALL_DIR/bin directory to your path:
   For bash shell:
     $ export PATH="$PATH:/usr/local/astrometry/bin"
   For tcsh shell:
     $ setenv PATH "$PATH:/usr/local/astrometry/bin"


GETTING INDEX FILES
-------------------
Next, grab some pre-cooked index files.  See the file GETTING-INDEXES
for details about how to do this.

(If you have index files from version 0.1 of the Astrometry.net
software, see the "Upgrading" section below.)

Each index file is designed to solve images within a narrow range of
scales.  The index files designed to solve small (angular size) images
are rather large files, so you probably only want to grab the index
files required for the images you wish to solve.  If you grab extra
index files, the solver will run more slowly, but the results should
be the same.

Each index file contains a large number of "skymarks" (landmarks for
the sky) that allow our solver to identify your images.  The skymarks
contained in each index file have sizes (diameters) within a narrow
range.  You probably want to download index files whose quads are,
say, 10% to 100% of the sizes of the images you want to solve.

For example, let's say you have some 1-degree square images.  You
should grab index files that contain skymarks of size 0.1 to 1 degree,
or 6 to 60 arcminutes.  Referring to the table below, you should grab
index files 203 through 209.  You might find that the same number of
fields solve, and faster, using just one or two of the index files in
the middle of that range - in our example you might try 205, 206 and
207.

For reference, we used index files 202 alone for our SDSS tests (13x9
arcmin fields).

The 204- and smaller index files are split into 12 "healpix" tiles;
each one covers 1/12th of the sky.  See the map here; you might not
need all of them.
  http://trac.astrometry.net/browser/trunk/src/astrometry/util/hp.png

---------------------------------------------------------------
Index Filename          Range of skymark diameters    File Size
                               (arcminutes)              (MB)
---------------------------------------------------------------
index-210+.tar.bz2           60  - 2000                    29
index-209.tar.bz2            42  -   60                    30
index-208.tar.bz2            30  -   42                    61
index-207.tar.bz2            22  -   30                   125
index-206.tar.bz2            16  -   22                   255
index-205.tar.bz2            11  -   16                   526
index-204.tar.bz2             8  -   11                 1,023
index-203.tar.bz2             5.6  -  8.0               2,089
index-202.tar.bz2             4.0  -  5.6               4,260
index-201.tar.bz2             2.8  -  4.0               5,878
index-200.tar.bz2             2.0  -  2.8              10,058
--------------------------------------------------------------

Download the index files you need and put them in the top-level
(astrometry-0.45) source directory.

Install them:
   $ make install-indexes

(Or you can extract them into the INSTALL_DIR/data directory by hand.)


Next, you can (optionally) configure the solver by editing the file
   INSTALL_DIR/etc/astrometry.cfg


AUTO-CONFIGURATION
------------------

We use a do-it-yourself auto-config system that tries to detect what
is available on your machine.  It is called "os-features", and it
works by trying to compile, link, and run a number of executables to
detect:

-whether the "netpbm" library is available
-whether certain GNU-specific function calls exist

You can change the flags used to compile and link "netpbm" by either:

-editing util/makefile.netpbm
-setting NETPBM_INC or NETPBM_LIB, like this:
  $ make NETPBM_INC="-I/tmp" NETPBM_LIB="-L/tmp -lnetpbm"

You can see whether netpbm was successfully detected by:

  $ cat util/makefile.os-features 
  # This file is generated by util/Makefile.
  HAVE_NETPBM := yes

You can force a re-detection either by deleting util/makefile.os-features
and util/os-features-config.h, or running:
  $ make reconfig
(which just deletes those files)


UPGRADING INDEX FILES (only necessary if you have OLD OLD index files!)
---------------------

The format of the index files changed after the 0.11 release.  There
is a program for updating them, and there is also a Makefile target.

  $ make upgrade-indexes

If you want to do it by hand, use the program "fix-bb".  Run it on
each of the ckdt.fits and skdt.fits files in your INSTALL_DIR/data
directory.


BIG-ENDIAN MACHINES
-------------------

Most CPUs these days are little-endian.  If you have an Intel or AMD
chip, you can skip this section.  The most common big-endian CPU in
recent times is the PowerPC used in Macs.  If you have one of these,
read on.

The index files we are distributing are for little-endian machines.
For big-endian machines, you must do the following:

cd /usr/local/astrometry/data
for f in index-*.fits; do
  fits-flip-endian -i $f -o flip-$f -e 1 -s 4 -e 3 -s 4 -e 4 -s 2 -e 5 -s 8 -e 6 -s 2 -e 8 -s 4 -e 9 -s 4 -e 10 -s 8 -e 11 -s 4
  for e in 0 2 7; do
    modhead flip-$f"[$e]" ENDIAN 01:02:03:04
  done
done

assuming "fits-flip-endian" and "modhead" are in your path.  The files
"flip-index-*.fits" will contain the flipped index files.

If that worked, you can swap the flipped ones into place (while
saving the originals) with:

cd /usr/local/astrometry/data
mkdir -p orig
for f in index-*.fits; do
  echo "backing up $f"
  mv -n $f orig/$f
  echo "moving $f into place"
  mv -n flip-$f $f
done

SOLVING
-------

Finally, solve some fields.

(If you didn't build the plotting commands, add "--no-plots" to the
command lines below.)

If you have any of index files 213 to 218:
   $ solve-field --scale-low 10 demo/apod4.jpg

If you have index 219:
   $ solve-field --scale-low 30 demo/apod5.jpg

If you have any of index files 210 to 214:
   $ solve-field --scale-low 1 demo/apod3.jpg

If you have any of index files 206 to 211:
   $ solve-field --scale-low 1 demo/apod2.jpg

If you have any of index files 203 to 205:
   $ solve-field apod1.jpg

If you have any of index files 200 to 203:
   $ solve-field demo/sdss.jpg


Copyrights and credits for the demo images are listed in the file
demo/CREDITS .

Note that you can also give solve-field a URL rather than a file as input:
   $ solve-field --out apod1b http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0302/ngc2264_croman_c3.jpg 


If you don't have the netpbm tools (eg jpegtopnm), do this instead:

If you have any of index files 213 to 218:
   $ solve-field --scale-low 10 demo/apod4.xyls

If you have index 219:
   $ solve-field --scale-low 30 demo/apod5.xyls

If you have any of index files 210 to 214:
   $ solve-field --scale-low 1 demo/apod3.xyls

If you have any of index files 206 to 211:
   $ solve-field --scale-low 1 demo/apod2.xyls

If you have any of index files 203 to 205:
   $ solve-field demo/apod1.xyls

If you have any of index files 200 to 203:
   $ solve-field demo/sdss.xyls


OUTPUT FILES
------------

   <base>-ngc.png   : an annotation of the image.
   <base>.wcs       : a FITS WCS header for the solution.
   <base>.new       : a new FITS file containing the WCS header.
   <base>-objs.png  : a plot of the sources (stars) we extracted from
                      the image.
   <base>-indx.png  : sources (red), plus stars from the index (green),
                      plus the skymark ("quad") used to solve the
                      image.
   <base>-indx.xyls : a FITS BINTABLE with the pixel locations of
                      stars from the index.
   <base>.rdls      : a FITS BINTABLE with the RA,Dec of sources we
                      extracted from the image.
   <base>.axy       : a FITS BINTABLE of the sources we extracted, plus
                      headers that describe the job (how the image is
                      going to be solved).
   <base>.solved    : exists and contains (binary) 1 if the field solved.
   <base>.match     : a FITS BINTABLE describing the quad match that
                      solved the image.
   <base>.kmz       : (optional) KMZ file for Google Sky-in-Earth.  You need
                      to have "wcs2kml" in your PATH.  See
                       http://code.google.com/p/wcs2kml/downloads/list
                       http://code.google.com/p/google-gflags/downloads/list


TRICKS AND TIPS
---------------

*** To lower the CPU time limit before giving up:

    $  solve-field --cpulimit 30 ...

will make it give up after 30 seconds.

(Note, however, that the "backend" configuration file (astrometry.cfg)
puts a limit on the CPU time that is spent on an image; solve-field
can reduce this but not increase it.)


*** Scale of the image: if you provide bounds (lower and upper limits)
on the size of the image you are trying to solve, solving can be much
faster.  In the last examples above, for example, we specified that
the field is at least 30 degrees wide: this means that we don't need
to search for matches in the index files that contain only tiny
skymarks.

Eg, to specify that the image is between 1 and 2 degrees wide:

   $ solve-field --scale-units degwidth --scale-low 1 --scale-high 2 ...

If you know the pixel scale instead:

   $ solve-field --scale-units arcsecperpix \
       --scale-low 0.386 --scale-high 0.406 ...

When you tell solve-field the scale of your image, it uses this to
decide which index files to try to use to solve your image; each index
file contains quads whose scale is within a certain range, so if these
quads are too big or too small to be in your image, there is no need
to look in that index file.  It is also used while matching quads: a
small quad in your image is not allowed to match a large quad in the
index file if such a match would cause the image scale to be outside
the bounds you specified.  However, all these checks are done before
computing a best-fit WCS solution and polynomial distortion terms, so
it is possible (though rare) for the final solution to fall outside
the limits you specified.  This should only happen when the solution
is correct, but you gave incorrect inputs, so you shouldn't be
complaining! :)


*** Guess the scale: solve-field can try to guess your image's scale
from a number of different FITS header values.  When it's right, this
often speeds up solving a lot, and when it's wrong it doesn't cost
much.  Enable this with:

   $ solve-field --guess-scale ...

*** If you've got big images: you might want to downsample them before
doing source extraction:
 
    $ solve-field --downsample 2 ...
 or $ solve-field --downsample 4 ...

*** Depth.  The solver works by looking at sources in your image,
starting with the brightest.  It searches for all "skymarks" that can
be built from the N brightest stars before considering star N+1.  When
using several index files, it can be much faster to search for many
skymarks in one index file before switching to the next one.  This
flag lets you control when the solver switches between index files.
It also lets you control how much effort the solver puts in before
giving up - by default it looks at all the sources in your image, and
usually times out before this finishes.

Eg, to first look at sources 1-20 in all index files, then sources
21-30 in all index files, then 31-40:

    $ solve-field --depth 20,30,40 ...
 or $ solve-field --depth 1-20 --depth 21-30 --depth 31-40 ...

Sources are numbered starting at one, and ranges are inclusive.  If
you don't give a lower limit, it will take 1 + the previous upper
limit.  To look at a single source, do

    $ solve-field --depth 42-42 ...


*** Our source extractor sometimes estimates the background badly, so
by default we sort the stars by brightness using a compromise between
the raw and background-subtracted flux estimates.  For images without
much nebulosity, you might find that using the background-subtracted
fluxes yields faster results.  Enable this by:

    $ solve-field --resort ...


*** If you've got big images: you might want to downsample them before
doing source extraction:

   $ solve-field --downsample 2 ...
or $ solve-field --downsample 4 ...
or etc


*** When solve-field processes FITS files, it runs them through a
"sanitizer" which tries to clean up non-standards-compliant images.
If your FITS files are compliant, this is a waste of time, and you can
avoid doing it.

   $ solve-field --no-fits2fits ...


*** When solve-field processes FITS images, it looks for an existing
WCS header.  If one is found, it tries to verify that header before
trying to solve the image blindly.  You can prevent this with:

   $ solve-field --no-verify ...

Note that currently solve-field only understands a small subset of
valid WCS headers: essentially just the TAN projection with a CD
matrix (not CROT).


*** If you don't want the plots to be produced:

   $ solve-field --no-plots ...


*** "I know where my image is to within 1 arcminute, how can I tell
solve-field to only look there?"

   $ solve-field --ra, --dec, --radius

Tells it to look within "radius" degrees of the given RA,Dec position.

*** To convert a list of pixel coordinates to RA,Dec coordinates:

   $ wcs-xy2rd -w wcs-file -i xy-list -o radec-list

Where xy-list is a FITS BINTABLE of the pixel locations of sources;
recall that FITS specifies that the center of the first pixel is pixel
coordinate (1,1).


*** To convert from RA,Dec to pixels:

   $ wcs-rd2xy -w wcs-file -i radec-list -o xy-list


*** To make cool overlay plots: see plotxy, plot-constellations.


*** To change the output filenames when processing multiple input
files: each of the output filename options listed below can include
"%s", which will be replaced by the base output filename.  (Eg, the
default for --wcs is "%s.wcs").  If you really want a "%" character in
your output filename, you have to put "%%".

Outputs include: --new-fits, --kmz, --solved, --cancel, --match,
--rdls, --corr, --wcs --keep-xylist --pnm
Also included: --solved-in, --verify


*** Reusing files between runs:

The first time you run solve-field, save the source extraction
results:
   $ solve-field --keep-xylist %s.xy input.fits ...

On subsequent runs, instead of using the original input file, use the
saved xylist instead.  Also add --continue to overwrite any output
file that already exists.
   $ solve-field input.xy --no-fits2fits --continue ...

To skip previously solved inputs (note that this assumes single-HDU
inputs):
   $ solve-field --skip-solved ...


Optimizing the code
-------------------

Here are some things you can do to make the code run faster:

  * we try to guess "-mtune" settings that will work for you; if we're
    wrong, you can set the environment variable ARCH_FLAGS before
    compiling:

      $ ARCH_FLAGS="-mtune=nocona" make

    You can find details in the gcc manual:
      http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/

    You probably want to look in the section:
      "GCC Command Options"
         -> "Hardware Models and Configurations"
             -> "Intel 386 and AMD x86-64 Options"

    http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.3.0/gcc/i386-and-x86_002d64-Options.html#i386-and-x86_002d64-Options


WHAT ARE ALL THESE PROGRAMS?
----------------------------

When you "make install", you'll get a bunch of programs in
/usr/local/astrometry/bin.  Here's a brief synopsis of what each one
does.  For more details, run the program without arguments (most of
them give at least a brief summary of what they do).

Image-solving programs
----------------------
  * solve-field: main high-level command-line user interface.

  * backend: higher-level solver that reads "augmented xylists";
called by solve-field.

  * augment-xylist: creates "augmented xylists" from images, which
include star positions and hints and instructions for solving.

  * blind: low-level command-line solver.

  * image2xy: source extractor.

Plotting programs
-----------------
  * plotxy: plots circles, crosses, etc over images.

  * plotquad: draws polygons over images.

  * plot-constellations: annotates images with constellations, bright
stars, Messier/NGC objects, Henry Draper catalog stars, etc.

  * plotcat: produces density plots given lists of stars.

WCS utilities
-------------
  * new-wcs: merge a WCS solution with existing FITS header cards; can
be used to create a new image file containing the WCS headers.

  * fits-guess-scale: try to guess the scale of an image based on FITS
headers.

  * wcsinfo: print simple properties of WCS headers (scale, rotation, etc)

  * wcs-xy2rd, wcs-rd2xy: convert between lists of pixel (x,y) and
(RA,Dec) positions.

  * wcs-resample: projects one FITS image onto another image.  

  * wcs-grab/get-wcs: try to interpret an existing WCS header.

Miscellany:
-----------
  * an-fitstopnm: converts FITS images into ugly PNM images.

  * get-healpix: which healpix covers a given RA,Dec?

  * hpowned: which small healpixels are inside a big healpixel?

  * control-program: sample code for how you might use the
Astrometry.net code in your own software.

  * xylist2fits: converts a text list of x,y positions to a FITS
binary table.

  * rdlsinfo: print stats about a list of RA,Dec positions (rdlist).

  * xylsinfo: print stats about a list of x,y positions (xylist).

FITS utilities
--------------
  * tablist: list values in a FITS binary table.

  * modhead: print or modify FITS header cards.

  * fitscopy: general FITS image / table copier.

  * tabmerge: combines rows in two FITS tables.

  * fitstomatlab: prints out FITS binary tables in a silly format.

  * liststruc: shows the structure of a FITS file.

  * listhead: prints FITS header cards.

  * imcopy: copies FITS images.

  * imarith: does (very) simple arithmetic on FITS images.

  * imstat: computes statistics on FITS images.

  * fitsgetext: pull out individual header or data blocks from
multi-HDU FITS files.

  * subtable: pull out a set of columns from a many-column FITS binary
table.

  * tabsort: sort a FITS binary table based on values in one column.

  * column-merge: create a FITS binary table that includes columns
from two input tables.

  * add-healpix-column: given a FITS binary table containing RA and
DEC columns, compute the HEALPIX and add it as a column.

  * resort-xylist: used by solve-field to sort a list of stars using a
compromise between background-subtracted and non-background-subtracted
flux (because our source extractor sometimes messes up the background
subtraction).

  * fits-flip-endian: does endian-swapping of FITS binary tables.

  * fits-dedup: removes duplicate header cards.

Index-building programs
-----------------------

  * build-index: given a FITS binary table with RA,Dec, build an index
    file.  This is the "easy", recent way.  The old way uses the rest
    of these programs:

    * usnobtofits, tycho2tofits, nomadtofits, 2masstofits: convert
catalogs into FITS binary tables.

    * build-an-catalog: convert input catalogs into a standard FITS
binary table format.

    * cut-an: grab a bright, uniform subset of stars from a catalog.

    * startree: build a star kdtree from a catalog.

    * hpquads: find a bright, uniform set of N-star features.

    * codetree: build a kdtree from N-star shape descriptors.

    * unpermute-quads, unpermute-stars: reorder index files for
efficiency.



XYLISTS
-------

The solve-field program accepts either images or "xylists" (xyls),
which are just FITS BINTABLE files which contain two columns (float or
double (E or D) format) which list the pixel coordinates of sources
(stars, etc) in the image.

To specify the column names (eg, "XIMAGE" and "YIMAGE"):
  $ solve-field --x-column XIMAGE --y-column YIMAGE ...

Our solver assumes that the sources are listed in order of brightness,
with the brightest sources first.  If your files aren't sorted, you
can specify a column by which the file should be sorted.
  $ solve-field --sort-column FLUX ...

By default it sorts with the largest value first (so it works
correctly if the column contains FLUX values), but you can reverse
that by:
  $ solve-field --sort-ascending --sort-column MAG ...

When using xylists, you should also specify the original width and
height of the image, in pixels:
  $ solve-field --width 2000 --height 1500 ...

Alternatively, if the FITS header contains "IMAGEW" and "IMAGEH" keys,
these will be used.

The solver can deal with multi-extension xylists; indeed, this is a
convenient way to solve a large number of fields at once.  You can
tell it which extensions it should solve by:
  $ solve-field --fields 1-100,120,130-200

(Ranges of fields are inclusive, and the first FITS extension is 1, as
per the FITS standard.)

Unfortunately, the plotting code isn't smart about handling multiple
fields, so if you're using multi-extension xylists you probably want
to turn off plotting:
  $ solve-field --no-plots ...


BACKEND CONFIG
--------------
Because we also operate a web service using most of the same software,
the local version of the solver is a bit more complicated than it
really needs to be.  The "solve-field" program takes your input files,
does source extraction on them to produce an "xylist" -- a FITS
BINTABLE of source positions -- then takes the information you
supplied about your fields on the command-line and adds FITS headers
encoding this information.  We call this file an "augmented xylist";
we use the filename suffix ".axy".  "solve-field" then calls the
"backend" program, passing it your axy file.  "backend" reads a config
file (by default /usr/local/astrometry/etc/astrometry.cfg) that describes
things like where to find index files, whether to load all the index
files at once or run them one at a time, how long to spend on each
field, and so on.  If you want to force only a certain set of index
files to load, you can copy the astrometry.cfg file to a local version
and change the list of index files that are loaded, and then tell
solve-field to use this config file:

   $ solve-field --backend-config myastrometry.cfg ...


SOURCE EXTRACTION USING SEXTRACTOR
----------------------------------
http://www.astromatic.net/software/sextractor

The "Source Extractor" aka "SExtractor" program by Emmanuel Bertin can
be used to do source extraction if you don't want to use our own
bundled "image2xy" program.

NOTE: users have reported that SExtractor 2.4.4 (available in some
Ubuntu distributions) DOES NOT WORK -- it prints out correct source
positions as it runs, but the "xyls" output file it produces contains
all (0,0).  We haven't looked into why this is or how to work around
it.  Later versions of SExtractor such as 2.8.6 work fine.

You can tell solve-field to use SExtractor like this:

  $ solve-field --use-sextractor ...

By default we use almost all SExtractor's default settings.  The
exceptions are:

  1) We write a PARAMETERS_NAME file containing:
         X_IMAGE
         Y_IMAGE
         MAG_AUTO

  2) We write a FILTER_NAME file containing a Gaussian PSF with FWHM
     of 2 pixels.  (See blind/augment-xylist.c "filterstr" for the
     exact string.)

  3) We set CATALOG_TYPE FITS_1.0

  4) We set CATALOG_NAME to a temp filename.


If you want to override any of the settings we use, you can use:

  $ solve-field --use-sextractor --sextractor-config <sex.conf>

In order to reproduce the default behavior, you must:

  1) Create a parameters file like the one we make, and set
     PARAMETERS_NAME to its filename

  2) Set:
  $ solve-field --x-column X_IMAGE --y-column Y_IMAGE \
       --sort-column MAG_AUTO --sort-ascending

  3) Create a filter file like the one we make, and set FILTER_NAME to
     its filename


Note that you can tell solve-field where to find SExtractor with

  $ solve-field --use-sextractor --sextractor-path <path-to-sex-executable>



WORKAROUNDS
-----------
*** No python

There are two places we use python: handling images, and filtering FITS files.

You can avoid the image-handling code by doing source extraction
yourself; see the "No netpbm" section below.

You can avoid filtering FITS files by using the "--no-fits2fits"
option to solve-field.

*** No netpbm

We use the netpbm tools (jpegtopnm, pnmtofits, etc) to convert from
all sorts of image formats to PNM and FITS.

If you don't have these programs installed, you must do source
extraction yourself and use "xylists" rather than images as the input
to solve-field.  See SEXTRACTOR and XYLIST sections above.

ERROR MESSAGES during compiling
-------------------------------

1.    /bin/sh: line 1: /dev/null: No such file or directory

We've seen this happen on Macs a couple of times.  Reboot and it goes
away...

2.    makefile.deps:40: deps: No such file or directory

Not a problem.  We use automatic dependency tracking: "make" keeps
track of which source files depend on which other source files.  These
dependencies get stored in a file named "deps"; when it doesn't exist,
"make" tries to rebuild it, but not before printing this message.

3.    os-features-test.c: In function 'main':
      os-features-test.c:23: warning: implicit declaration of function 'canonicalize_file_name'
      os-features-test.c:23: warning: initialization makes pointer from integer without a cast
      /usr/bin/ld: Undefined symbols:
      _canonicalize_file_name
      collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Not a problem.  We provide replacements for a couple of OS-specific
functions, but we need to decide whether to use them or not.  We do
that by trying to build a test program and checking whether it works.
This failure tells us your OS doesn't provide the
canonicalize_file_name() function, so we plug in a replacement.

4.    configure: WARNING: cfitsio: == No acceptable f77 found in $PATH
      configure: WARNING: cfitsio: == Cfitsio will be built without Fortran wrapper support
      drvrfile.c: In function 'file_truncate':
      drvrfile.c:360: warning: implicit declaration of function 'ftruncate'
      drvrnet.c: In function 'http_open':
      drvrnet.c:300: warning: implicit declaration of function 'alarm'
      drvrnet.c: In function 'http_open_network':
      drvrnet.c:810: warning: implicit declaration of function 'close'
      drvrsmem.c: In function 'shared_cleanup':
      drvrsmem.c:154: warning: implicit declaration of function 'close'
      group.c: In function 'fits_get_cwd':
      group.c:5439: warning: implicit declaration of function 'getcwd'
      ar: creating archive libcfitsio.a

Not a problem; these errors come from cfitsio and we just haven't
fixed them.


LICENSE
-------

The Astrometry.net code suite is free software licensed under the GNU
GPL, version 2.  See the file LICENSE for the full terms of the GNU
GPL.

The index files come with their own license conditions.  See the file
GETTING-INDEXES for details.

CONTACT
-------
You can post questions (or maybe even find the answer to your
questions) at http://forum.astrometry.net .  However, please also send
an email to "code2 at astrometry dot net" pointing out your post to
the forum -- we never remember to check the forum!  We would also be
happy to hear via email any bug reports, comments, critiques, feature
requests, and in general any reports on your experiences, good or bad.