plate-solved the field

Lost. I had shot a fairly decent image of the region where I thought Pluto was but given the Paramount pointing was a little askew, I needed to know. I tried manually to resolve the stars but I just couldn't seem to correlate the field the chip was detecting to my SkyTools.

Steve suggested I plate-solve it. Really? A slightly-out-of-focus photograph of nothing in particular?

Astrometry.net to the rescue! Wow. It took a while but the amazing tool figured out where I was!

Near the top of the shot, HD 176351 (aka SAO 187567), helped me get on target. That stars was about 18 arc-minutes from the planet...

Rotated the field in SkyTools and nudged TheSky to the right spot.

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I learned later in the week end, this is what Dietmar does. He doesn't (or can't) bother with the eyepiece-to-verify-the-field-and-centre-then-swap-in-the-camera technique. He shoots, plate-solves, syncs, and moves (if necessary). Of course, he's using MaxIm, and that feature is built-in.

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I can't recall if I attempted to log into my Astrometry.net account at the time. I would not have succeeded...