Larom - multi-star finder

Sept 11 2024 CWS.

Goal is to build the tools needed to select multiple stars in a fixed geometrical relationship, within a given magnitude range. For a given date, we want to find triplet or quad combinations that are appropriate for making differential image motion measurements for varying angular separations.

One starting point is the algorithms used by astrometry.net, which can determine celestial coordinates of an image of the sky by comparing geometrical relationships of detected sources to a known catalog. They seem to have an elegant geometrical hashing algorithm and pre-computed data structures.

Paper here:

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We only need the bright stars (need to find appropriate magnitude range, I think brighter than 8th magnitude is about right). The SIMBAD astronomical catalog/interface should work fine.

Focal plane layout diagrams:

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