Observing the sky is more than just “looking up”. It’s about learning from it, studying its characteristics, recognizing local limitations, and getting a lot, a lot of information. Fortunately, the Web is an extraordinary ally, offering all kinds of tools and specialized forums. Today it’s Astrometry.net’s turn, a service that identifies the celestial objects that appear in your night sky images. In essence, a “reverse search” for nebulae, stars, and galaxies.
One of the first recommendations shared by many astronomy enthusiasts is not going “blind” to buy a telescope. In fact, binoculars are a better option for any beginner interested in learning more about their sky, and that’s added to the potential of obtaining excellent images with a DSLR camera. Now, if you’ve gone straight for the second option and you have several night sky images you want to know in depth, then you should visit Astrometry.net.
How to identify objects in the night sky with Astrometry.net
The site explains its work precisely: If you have night sky images whose coordinates you don’t know or consider unreliable, all you have to do is upload each one to receive calibrated astrometric metadata, and an identification of the objects that appear in the field of view. User participation is impressive, with more than one and a half million images you can explore (some are protected).
https://old.neoteo.com/see-a-satellite-tonight-rastrea-y-observa-satelites-en-tu-cielo/Once analyzed, the image receives a list with all the relevant metadata (published to the right of the interface), but the most interesting thing is the group of nearby images at the bottom, so you can study the “neighborhood”, photographed by other users.
Astrometry.net allows you to upload images anonymously (all will be publicly visible) under the CC BY 3.0 license, but you can modify and create albums if you set up an account on the site. Also, if you are a programmer, you have the possibility to take advantage of its API to access certain parts of the service. Give it a try!
Official site: Click here
