Installation of M.A.P. - Multi Aster Photometry

How to get M.A.P. - Multi Aster Photometry ?

Contact the author of the program to get access to the github repository : Dit e-mailadres wordt beveiligd tegen spambots. JavaScript dient ingeschakeld te zijn om het te bekijken.

Instructions.

1. Clone the repository to your disk

2. Create in your python IDE an environment (.venv or ...) to keep the versions of the used modules separated from your other projects

3. Install all necessary modules : pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Install ASTAP and its D50 database or, for a bigger telescope preferably the D80 database : https://www.hnsky.org/astap
This is only necessary if the science images are not (allways) plate solved. 

Remark : ASTAP is very powerfull, but sometimes switching between telescopes provokes problems. 
In that case try to solve your images first in ASTAP itself to find the correct settings in the "Alignement" tab. 
Eventually have a look at the video that Han made about this plate solver.

5. copy the default Startup_Map from the repositiory to another location, and/or change its name. 
If not, each time you load a new version of MAP your files could /will be overwritten with newer versions.

6. There is a ChangeThisTo_ini folder : change the name of that folder to ini
Every new version of MAP will overwrite your changes if the name of the folder is NOT changed.

In this folder you will creeate later a .ini file for all the the different configurations you have : every telescope/camera/binning combination is slightly different and can have its own default values

One Example file is present called : example.ini


Open the ini file. Change the F:/Example/ to the new name of the Startup_Map from point 5. Change also the drive letter, if necessary
Eventually change also the location of where your ASTAP exe has been installed.

The other fields may be changed with : the Default Values screen
Also other .ini files may be created via the default values screen

8. There is a last change to be done : change the name of the file ChangeThisTo_Astropie.ini to : Astropie.ini

If you changed the name of the example.ini, or if you want to startup MAP wirth another default file, it's in this file you have to make the change


That's all, you are ready for :

run the script AstroPie.py to start M.A.P.