Plate.TraceLevel Property

Plate.TraceLevel (read-write, Integer)

Tracing level: 0 (default, means no tracing) through 4 (means maximum detail)

Syntax

Plate.TraceLevel [= Integer]

The property syntax has these parts:

Part	Description
Value (Integer)	Tracing level: 0 (default, means no tracing) through 4 (means maximum detail)

Remarks

PinPoint has built-in tracing capabilities, which can be of great assistance in diagnosing plate-solving failures.

Star Lists

If the Plate.TraceLevel property is set to any value greater than 0, PinPoint will generate tab-delimited lists of stars in files (see the Plate.TracePath property for the directory into which these files are written). If Plate.FindImageStars() is called (either explicitly or implicitly as part of a call to Plate.Solve()), a file called ImageStars.tab is produced. If Plate.FindCatalogStars() is called (either explicitly or implicitly as part of a call to Plate.Solve()), a file called CatStars.tab is produced. These two files contain tab-delimited lists of the image stars and catalog stars, respectively.

These lists may be imported into two spreadsheet files that are supplied with PinPoint, Image.xls and Catalog.xls. Bring the files into notepad, copy the rows to the clipboard, and then paste into the spreadsheet area starting at row 2. Switch to the scatter plot and note that the stars are shown as they would appear in an image. If you do this with both the catalog and image stars, you can print the scatter plots and hold them up to the light to look for matches. If you change the scales on the plots to accomodate your camera size, be sure to change both the catalog and image plots to have the same scales. Feel free to change the ranges and labels on these spreadsheets. Note that PinPoint uses only the brightest 60 stars from the catalog and image (unless using the USNO SA2.0 catalog, where the brightest 10% of stars are first thrown out).

Triplet Tracing

If the Plate.TraceLevel property is set to any value greater than 0 and Plate.Solve() is called, a file called TripletTrace.txt is produced. This file contains a rather detailed trace of the process used by PinPoint to find congruent-triangle matches between catalog and imag star triplets, and its attepmts to use these triplets to find a working transform between image and catalog coordinates. The data produced in this file is meant for DC-3 Dreams personnel -- it is not delf-documenting.

If the Plate.TraceLevel property is set to a value of 2 or higher and Plate.Solve() is called, another file called TripletDump.txt is produced. It contains a list of the combinatorial triplets formed fron the selected image stars and catalog stars to be used to find the transform. This is also meant for DC-3 Dreams personnel -- it is not delf-documenting.

Notes

Each call overwrites any previous trace file.

Tracing requires the TracePath property to be set.