
Zacharias N, Finch CT, Girard TM, Henden A, Bartlett JL, Monet DG, Zacharias MI (2013) The fourth US Naval Observatory CCD astrograph catalog (UCAC4). NEAT: a spatial telescope to detect nearby exoplanets using astrometry Crouzier, Antoine With the present state of exoplanet detection techniques, none of the rocky planets of the Solar System would be discovered, yet their presence is a very strong constraint on the scenarios of formation of planetary systems. Keywords.minor planets, asteroids, astrometry, atlases, surveys The Spacewatch Project is the longest-running of all present programs of astrometry of solar system objects and the rst to use charge-coupled device (CCD) imaging detectors for such work (Gehrels et al. Warner BD, Stephens RD, Harris AW (2011) Save the light curves. NEAT is designed to carry out space-borne extremely-high-precision astrometric measurements at the 0.05 as (1 ) accuracy level, sufficient to detect dynamical effects due to orbiting planets of mass even lower than Earth’s around the nearest stars. Walsh K, Delbo M, Bottke W, Vokrouhlicky D, Lauretta D (2013) Introducing the Eulalia and New Polana asteroid families: re-assessing primitive asteroid families in the inner Main Belt, Icarus 225, 283–297.
NEAT ASTROMETRY CODE
Astrophysics Source Code Library, record ascl:1203.012. Astrometrica: astrometric data reduction of CCD images.

Oszkiewicz DA, Bowell E, Wasserman LH, Muinonen K, Penttilä A, Pieniluoma T, Trilling DE, Thomas CA (2012) Asteroid taxonomic signatures from photometric phase curves, Icarus 219, 283–296. Hergenrother CW, Nolan MC, Binzel RP, Cloutis EA, Barucci MA, Michel P, Scheeres D, d’Aubigny CD, Lazzaro D, Pinilla-Alonso N, Campins H, Licandro J, Clark BE, Rizk B, Beshore EC, Lauretta LS (2013) Light curve, color and phase function photometry of the OSIRIS-REx target asteroid (101955) Bennu, Icarus 226, 663–670.

Hergenrother CW, Hill D (2013) The OSIRIS-REx Target Asteroids! project: A small telescope initiative to characterize potential spacecraft mission target asteroids, Minor Planet Bulletin 40, p. Belskaya IN, Shevchenko VG (2000) Opposition effect of asteroids, Icarus 147, p. Here is another neat post showing a map of the night sky and highlighting where astro-bot has plate solved. There's even a Reddit bot that uses and replies to sky images with an annotated version.
NEAT ASTROMETRY SOFTWARE
The software will take a photo, send it to the plate solver, which returns an annotated version, and if your computer is connected to a compatible mount, it will send the right commands to move the telescope. Many people use a local version of this software bundled with a program called Astrotorilla ( ) tied in with their imaging software (such as BackyardEOS) to ensure they are pointed at the right place and to correct drift. The examples in the standard have all the comments neatly aligned - most files seem to start with the comment / at Byte 32. This is a very useful feature for an amateur astronomer's workflow (which is what I use it for) especially when doing long exposure astrophotography as you may not be able to tell exactly where your telescope is pointed when it's zoomed in. a wider shot of Cygnus and some other nearby constellationsĪs you can see it will annotate constellations, specific stars, and other deep sky objects.

Here are a few examples that I have submitted in the past:

You submit your image and get back an annotated version that lists what objects it detected. However the area of follow up astrometry is struggling to keep up with this abundance of new discoveries. This technology uses pattern matching to identify photographs of the night sky based on existing sky surveys. and NEAT, finding them in significant numbers. This service does what is called 'plate solving' - plate coming from the photographic term. A global space astrometry mission, Gaia is building the largest, most precise three-dimensional map of our Galaxy by surveying nearly two billion objects. Since this is fairly popular and no one has responded yet, I will give it a shot!
