Building Astrometry.net 0.80 on CentOS 8.2

August, 2020

Assumptions

  1. You have a system running CentOS 8.2 for x86-64.
  2. You'll be doing the build as a non-privileged user.
  3. You have the ability to either become root or run sudo for escalated privileges, to install the software system-wide.
  4. This system has been set up as a Workstation, with the “Development Tools” add-on group installed.

System Prep

  • Your system should already have the GNU build tools installed, as well as:
    • cairo-1.15.12-3
    • libpng-1.6.34-5
    • libjpeg-turbo-1.5.3-10
    • zlib-1.2.11-13
    • bzip2-libs-1.0.6-26
    • python36-3.6.8-2
  • We will need a few libraries installed.
    • sudo yum -y install cairo-devel libpng-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel zlib-devel bzip2-devel swig python36-devel
  • The netpbm-devel package is in PowerTools.
    • sudo dnf config-manager –set-enabled PowerTools
    • sudo yum -y install netpbm netpbm-devel netpbm-progs
  • We can get cfitsio through RPM / Yum from EPEL.
    • sudo yum -y install epel-release
    • sudo yum -y install cfitsio cfitsio-devel wcslib*
  • The pyfits package has been deprecated in favor of astropy. We will use pip3 to install numpy and astropy.
    • sudo pip3 install numpy
    • sudo pip3 install astropy

Building astrometry.net

  • wget http://astrometry.net/downloads/astrometry.net-0.80.tar.gz
  • tar zxvf astrometry.net-0.80.tar.gz
  • cd astrometry.net-0.80/util/
  • Edit 'makefile.netpbm'
    • NETPBM_INC ?= -I/usr/include/netpbm
    • NETPBM_LIB ?= -L/usr/lib64 -lnetpbm
  • cd /usr/lib64; sudo ln -s libnetpbm.so.11.82 libnetpbm.so
  • cd ~/astrometry.net-0.80/
  • make
  • make py
  • make extra
  • sudo make install

Download the astrometry.net data

  • If you're only doing wide-field work, you may be able to get by with these data files. They add up to ~400 MB.
    • for i in $( seq -w 7 19 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4100/index-41$i.fits; done
  • You may need these data files as well / instead. They add up to ~10 GB.
    • for i in $( seq -w 0 47 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-4202-$i.fits; done
    • for i in $( seq -w 0 47 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-4203-$i.fits; done
    • for i in $( seq -w 0 47 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-4204-$i.fits; done
    • for i in $( seq -w 0 11 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-4205-$i.fits; done
    • for i in $( seq -w 0 11 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-4206-$i.fits; done
    • for i in $( seq -w 0 11 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-4207-$i.fits; done
    • for i in $( seq -w 8 19 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-42$i.fits; done
  • Most people won't need these data files. They add up to ~24 GB.
    • for i in $( seq -w 0 47 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-4200-$i.fits; done
    • for i in $( seq -w 0 47 ); do wget http://data.astrometry.net/4200/index-4201-$i.fits; done
  • Move the index-*.fits data files to /usr/local/astrometry/data.

Testing

  1. export PATH=${PATH}:/usr/local/astrometry/bin
  2. cd demo
  3. solve-field apod2.jpg