mrnewmaniii <Richard.Newman@alltel.com> Feb 11, 2003
--- In guide-user@yahoogroups.com, Bill J Gray <pluto@p...> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Richard, I've not commented on the troubles with downloading
> DSS images because I had no real idea as to what might cause the
> trouble... but it occurs to me to ask: how about downloading A2.0
> and/or GSC-2.2 data? That is, is the problem a "generic
downloading
> anything, doesn't matter what" sort of problem, or a "downloading
> DSS images only" problem?
>
> Lawrence, it's true that I've done next to nothing with Charon
> for a while now, aside from occasional bug fixes. I am slightly
> unhappy about that, but I've had a few too many projects going on
> anyway; something has had to give, and Charon has been it.
>
> Charon was (as far as I know) the first program to do "automated
> astrometry", i.e., figuring out the match between star patterns
> in an image and patterns in a star catalog. I originally wrote it
> after some folks mentioned to me that they were spending more time
> reducing their images and extracting astrometry than they were in
> gathering the images. For folks doing a lot of astrometry, it's
> been mostly supplanted by Bob Denny's excellent _PinPoint_ software.
>
> A while back, I took a stab at turning Charon into a
> user-supported open-source program, and gave a talk in which I
> evangelized the idea that astrometry software should be provided
> in that manner:
>
> http://www.projectpluto.com/mpw_talk.htm
>
> Since then, I've posted all of Charon's source code, and a
> few people have used part or all of the code in their own
> projects. But it hasn't quite taken off as I'd hoped it might.
> Charon does have a lot of nifty stuff in it, and I'd hate to see
> it all go to waste... but I gotta have priorities.
>
> Should I return to Charon, though, a port to Windows would
> not be much of a priority. The graphics are almost never a
> problem; I've heard from _very_ few people who found that all the
> high-res modes failed, and those who did usually found that the
> '-;' switch got one or two such modes to work. I have some
> interest in rigging it up to support several new astrometric
> catalogues (Bordeaux, CMC-12, B1.0, and (when it comes out)
> UCAC-2) and in adding a good algorithm for measuring trailed
> images, as described at
>
> http://www.projectpluto.com/trailed.htm
>
> ...but not much in the way of plans beyond that.
>
> Regarding the duplicate 2001 HT50: this was originally known
> as plain ol' "2001 HT50", and now known as "C/2001 HT50", and
> Guide isn't bright enough to realize that it's the same comet
> with two different names. Similar problems arose with some
> recently-numbered comets such as P/Helin-Lawrence (152P),
> P/Helin (151P), and P/Shoemaker 3 (155P).
>
> You've got two choices here. You can download a replacement
> 'cometg.dat' file:
>
> http://www.projectpluto.com/cometg.zip
>
> in which the names have been changed to protect against
> duplication. Or you can wait for the next update, which will
> do the translation for you (just fixed it to do that).
>
> Incidentally, after doing this, you have to persuade Guide
> to re-read 'cometg.dat' and extract the currently bright comets.
> Easiest way to do that is to set its time ahead/back by a couple
> of years, then return to the present. It will then throw out
> the "bad" comets and keep the "right" ones.
>
> -- Bill