Welcome to the PinPoint Astrometric Engine and Visual PinPoint. The PinPoint engine is a powerful programmable software component that is designed to provide automatic astrometric and photometric services that compliment automated telescopes and cameras. Programs that use PinPoint include our ACP Observatory Control Software, MaxIm DL, CCD Autopilot, CCD Commander, FocusMax, and PoleAlignMax.
Via Visual PinPoint, the engine can easily be used for automated astrometry. For the advanced user who wants to write custom scripts or programs, PinPoint can handle many astronomy image processing needs from simple FITS header manipulation to advanced analysis of images.
For plate solving (the most common use of PinPoint), you need to have a reference catalog available. If your field of view is 15 or more arcminutes across, you can probably use the Guide Star Catalog. For narrower fields, or for the ultimate in reliability, you should use the USNO UCAC4 catalog (8 GB) or the USNO A2.0 catalog (6 GB, pointing applications only), or the USNO B1.0 catalog. The other supported catalogs (UCAC3 (obsolete), UCAC2 (obsolete), NOMAD and Tycho-2) are not dense enough for general purpose plate solving or ahave been superseded.
The DC-3 Dreams master CD-ROM comes with the Guide Star Catalog. To install the GSC from your CD-ROM, see the next section GSC Installer. If you don't have a DC-3 Dreams master CD-ROM, please see Installing the Guide Star Catalog via Download. You can also use the GSC Installer to configure it's location into Visual PinPoint, MaxIm DL and/or ACP. If you want to use the USNO A2.0 catalog (recommended for narrow fields of view), see the support knowledge base article Downloading and Using Reference Catalogs. For all catalogs except B1.0, you can use the Catalog Checker to validate the catalog once you install it.
On the Start Menu, under (all programs) PinPoint, you'll find the GSC Installer. Use this to copy the GSC from your CD-ROM to your hard drive. It requires about 0.4 GB of space. Instructions on its screen should be obvious.
On the Start Menu, under (all programs) PinPoint, you'll find the Catalog Checker. This tool can be used to validate the GSC, A2.0, UCAC, and Tycho-2 catalogs. It asks you for the root folder of your catalog then checks that all files are present and that they are the correct file size. When it's finished, Notepad will open with a report.
If you're using PinPoint with programs such as MaxIm DL, FocusMax, ACP, CCD Autopilot, or PoleAlignMax, please refer to the instructions that come with those programs. The settings for the PinPoint engine are established by each program that uses the engine. There is no cross-talk between these settings!
The Visual PinPoint program, included with the PinPoint engine, is a tool for doing mass plate solving, as well as hunting for asteroids and supernovae.
Please take the time to go through the Getting Started page, as well as the Release Notes. These documents contain vital information!With PinPoint, you can quickly determine the exact center RA and Dec of a CCD camera image to within less than an arc-second. It can also add or update World Coordinate System (WCS) data to a FITS image, making the image useful for direct astrometry by a wide variety of professional software tools.
Information provided by Dr. Stephen Levine of the U.S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station was critical in getting the internet access to the B2.0 and NOMAD catalogs working. PinPoint uses the VO Compliant Cone Search service provided by USNO.
The motion filters used in Visual PinPoint's asteroid searching are the result of suggestions and algorithms from Paulo R. Holvorcem of the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil. Dr. Holvorcem's help is sincerely appreciated. He is a long time user of PinPoint and has kept the pressure on me to achieve the highest level of accuracy and consistency. His radar target tests early in the development of PinPoint helped me to gain the confidence that I could attain research-grade performance.
The object detection scheme is patterned after that in Jure Skvarc's excellent FitsBlink program. He graciously gave permission for me to adapt some of it for use in PinPoint.
The GSC-ACT reference catalog features and Gaussian PSF fitting code were contributed by Bill Gray of Project Pluto, the publisher of the Guide planetarium software and the Charon astrometry package.
The algorithm for matching the catalog stars and image stars is based on ideas from Jim Roe in phone conversations that took place in Spring 1999. Since then, the basic algorithm has changed little, except for the addition of the flip- and mirror-free capability introduced in this version (3.0).
The Guide Star Catalog (GSC) version 1.1 is copyrighted by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., and is reproduced here with permission. For more information, see the copyright.gsc on the PinPoint CD-ROM.