Help Needed - Looking for FITS Images for Eductation

As for the FITS headers. The RA/DEC don't really matter for planetart stuff, the only thing that might cause trouble is that we will be measuring the orbit by graphing the PA. On Saturn that is easy because you can use the plane of the rings as a reference regardless of any change in orientation of the camera over the images. Is there some way to know what way images are oriented with Neptune? (Even just 2 stars in the field of view would be enough)

You could probably load up the field in say Aladin, and it will save the RA/DEC, the rest can be calculated I think.

What is this Aladin you speak of? And more importantly, is it available for either OSX or Linux?

BB

Bart - a JAVA based program that fetches images based on the criteria you enter. Very powerful tool and it accesses pretty much all the databases you need. Give it a whirl - it isn't the most intuitive program but don't let that put you off. I use it all the time now. Super. Oh, and free! Software downloads and intros here:

aladin.u-strasbg.fr/


PS - can you tell me what PA is?

What is this Aladin you speak of? And more importantly, is it available for either OSX or Linux?

Would I reccommend it otherwise?
Aladin is made from only the finest Java!

I see dave posted the link.

Basically you load your image in this. Then load an image from the online databases of the same area of sky. The overlay this image with a star chart.

Next you give your image the same rough co-ordinates as the loaded image, so that there is overlap between the images. Then you pick a few stars on the calibrated downloaded plate and match them to your image. At that point I _think_ you can save your image as fits with the relavent headder information.

Cheers,
~Al