Please note the installation will actually download these two astrometric index files and every other one in-between them. Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments via the comments section on the bottom of this page. Download the latest version of AstroTortilla for free from this link.This is paramount as AstroTortilla needs to interface with your mount directly via ASCOM. Your mount must be controlled via a laptop and the likes of EQMod or other such ASCOM software, through an EQDirect USB interface.If you are interested, you will need to sort out a couple of things beforehand: I tend to only need a single iteration to get my target perfectly centred. It can even iterate through this process until your target is very precisely centred within a chosen margin of error (default is 1 arcminute). It will capture an image with your CCD camera, analyse it to check where you are actually aiming and then slew your telescope to remove the goto error and centre your target. You set up your telescope and CCD camera, you send your telescope to your target and then tell AstroTortilla to plate solve. Why bother picking multiple stars and aligning them perfectly when you would rather spend the time actually imaging your target?.The goto alignment will very seldom provide you with perfect goto accuracy.Of course, a decent three-star goto alignment prior to slewing to your target removes quite a lot of the error but: Why is this in any way important, though? Simple - when you tell your telescope to go to a deep space object, it will go to it but will probably miss and not have your chosen object centred in view. Best of all, AstroTortilla is completely free and works wonders for plate solving.įor those unaware, plate solving is a process by which software checks your astrophotograph for star patterns and determines what it is you are actually looking at. It is however a program that once you start using, you will not regret having spent the time to install it and set it up. AstroTortilla is one of those programs that may seem overly complicated to set up and start using, hence this short tutorial for those interested.

Plate solving software free