software to identify stars and constellations automatically?

[JEL]

Like there is software that can recognize faces on people automatically, and show their names, are there any software that can do that for stars or constellations?

An automatic night-sky analyzer that can estimate where your photo actually belongs on the night-sky dome. A bit like a stitching program maybe.

For example, snapping a photo of ursa-major and loading it into the program and then have it automatically generate the correct coordinates of the picture. Maybe even an ability to plot the names of the major stars in the photo right onto the photo as overlay-text.

Just like registax can auto-align 2 photos based on the stars in them, then a program that can align a photo based on a generic star-map without you knowing the actual coordinates in advance.

A pattern-recognition and correlation software of some sort I guess.

 

[Ghostrider]

This one may come near enough your specs: http://astromb.free.fr/
Maybe.

 

[Rtyh-12]

Cheaters. You are all cheaters!

 

[george7378]

There is always astrometry.net - you only need to upload your photos to Flickr and it will solve them automatically - I think you need to join the group though. Instructions are here:

http://astrometry.net/use.html

 

[JEL]

This one may come near enough your specs: http://astromb.free.fr/
Maybe.

Thank you. I looked at the page but wasn't able to find any download or purchase link. I've sent them an email.
So I'm not yet sure about this program.

Your link did send me further on my search though...
(more below)



@Rtyh-12; it's training-wheels for learning how to ride the bike

There is always astrometry.net - you only need to upload your photos to Flickr and it will solve them automatically - I think you need to join the group though. Instructions are here:

http://astrometry.net/use.html

Thanks. That seems very clever actually
No windows version yet though, which I would prefer so I could work on local files. The reason I'm looking for such software to begin with is because I'm just starting to see if I can even get good pictures of the night-sky, and haven't got any telescope or dedicated equipment yet. So my images so far are not precise in any way with regard to 'navigation'. I don't have all 'the numbers' needed to search and identify all the stars in the image but only the general direction my camera is pointing in and the time of the individual photos (not enough to pinpoint anything more than just the most well-known stars and constellations).


However, because of these links I've now learned that the process is called 'plate solving' . 'Blind plate solving', to be more precise. That improved the google searches and gave the following 2 interesting freewares:

http://larryo.org/work/information/unimap/

http://www.astrosurf.com/pulgar/elbrus/elbrusin.htm

I've not tested them in detail yet, but just given them a quick run.
Elbrus seems to need some navigational pre-info, and unimap seems to need some info on the camera-optics.
I wasn't able to get them to detect my test-image of ursa-major yet, but like I said, I haven't gone into the detailed settings of the 2 programs yet so it's to early to really conclude anything.

---------- Post added at 22:24 ---------- Previous post was at 17:51 ----------

Just to update:

Bingo!! I just had Blind plate solving success with unimap
( http://larryo.org/work/information/unimap/ )

Wow, really cool program :thumbup:

I didn't give it any pre-input (in the program pre-input is called hints), so the test was basically as hard as possible.
I gave it a stacked image I have done with a few 30 second exposures on a static tripod. The picture has fairly long star-trails and at first it didn't find anything. Then I used the double-layer and subtraction method to turn the streaks into as much of a point-light as I could (not quite perfect) and tried again... bam, there it was!

I double-checked with google-sky and sure enough, it got the stars right.
Good software.

 

[Keatah]

And I just spent the evening determining dates of some old photos with Stellarium based on the positions of stars and moon and planets. The moon and Jupiter were the biggest help of all!

---------- Post added at 07:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:02 AM ----------

Now my computer is doing some REAL WORK for a change.. Unimap rocks!

---------- Post added at 08:02 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:03 AM ----------

I threw a few stumpers at it. I had to mask out a few objects. But once that was done. it went ahead and got it right.