astrometry-net ☆

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Description:
Automatic identification of astronomical images

Type: Formula | Latest Version: 0.97@0 | Tracked Since: Dec 17, 2025

Links: Homepage | formulae.brew.sh

Category: Other

Tags: astronomy astrophysics image-processing scientific-computing plate-solving

Install: brew install astrometry-net

About:
Astrometry.net provides a robust engine for solving astronomical image coordinates, identifying the precise sky position from just pixel data. It enables automated annotation of telescope images and plate-solving without prior metadata. This tool is essential for research pipelines and amateur astronomy workflows requiring accurate celestial mapping.

Key Features:

Blind plate-solving: identifies sky positions without any prior coordinate information
Command-line and web-based tools: includes solve-field for automation and a web interface
Extensible indexing: supports creating custom star indexes for specific sky regions or depths
Integration with astropy: python bindings for use in scientific pipelines

Use Cases:

Automated processing of astrophotography for accurate celestial coordinate tagging
Pipeline integration for scientific observatories to verify telescope pointing
Creating annotated survey maps from raw astronomical imagery

Alternatives:

astropy – Astropy offers WCS and coordinate transformation but relies on external tools for blind solving; astrometry.net specializes in the solving engine itself.
plate-solve2 – A commercial, GUI-centric tool for Windows; astrometry.net is open-source and scriptable for Linux/macOS.

License: BSD-3-Clause

Dependencies: cairo, cfitsio, gsl, jpeg-turbo, libpng, netpbm, numpy, python@3.14, wcslib

Bottles available for: arm64_tahoe, arm64_sequoia, arm64_sonoma, sonoma, arm64_linux, x86_64_linux

Version History

Detected	Change	Commit
Sep 15, 2025 3:24am	VERSION_BUMP	709cb8dc
Oct 12, 2024 6:38pm	VERSION_BUMP	f66d79f9
Oct 12, 2024 1:13pm	VERSION_BUMP	4c16c92b