Fairly Rare Use Of Macs In Astrophotography

[CharlesPhillips]

All -

This might have gone in Showcase but that thread seems to be pretty dead.

Perhaps there are people using Macs in Astrophotography that I have not run into yet. I am a member of an international group of astronomers that track satellites, they all use Linux (and some Windows) but I use Macintosh. This is a photo of a satellite going by overhead, we use these photos to track some "off the books" satellites. There is software that you can use to do things on Mac but I had a HARD time finding it and getting it to run!

Maybe someone will read this and we might exchange notes?

Charles

 

[MacInWin]

There is software that you can use to do things on Mac but I had a HARD time finding it and getting it to run!

Not an astronomer, but can we help with the software? What is it, what made finding it hard and what issues are you having with getting it to run?

 

[CharlesPhillips]

Not an astronomer, but can we help with the software? What is it, what made finding it hard and what issues are you having with getting it to run?

First, THANK YOU for offering assistance! I have been on the Internet since the Usenet days and it seems to be increasingly hard to find help. The days of the users group and people offering to help seem to be past us. :-(

My chore has been to find a way to solve a number of problems - how to predict where the satellites will be, how to point my camera, how to process photos. I have solved a number of them, I could write some short descriptions of what I am slowly working through right now. Give me a day to write something.

I have learned how to install ported applications (like Gpredict) and how to install "SAO Image DS 9" and how to read the EXIF data on photos - right now I am trying to write an API call in C or C++ so I could read the EXIF data (with EXIFTool) on a series of photographs. Do you know anything about that?

Charles

 

[MacInWin]

No, but there are folks here who can help you, I'm sure. We just need to know the problem. As for EXIF data, there are tools in the App Store to read EXIF data, maybe you can do an Automator process to get what you want instead of having to work with C++? I just did a search at the Mac App Store for EXIF and got a bunch of hits.

 

[CharlesPhillips]

Foolishly, I had not (yet?) looked in the App Store for EXIF readers - they have some well reviewed free ones. Let me look at my process and think of some specific questions.

Thanks!

Charles

 

[CharlesPhillips]

No, but there are folks here who can help you, I'm sure. We just need to know the problem. As for EXIF data, there are tools in the App Store to read EXIF data, maybe you can do an Automator process to get what you want instead of having to work with C++? I just did a search at the Mac App Store for EXIF and got a bunch of hits.

Ok, as is typical this is not as simple as it should be. Sigh.

Looking at the EXIF apps on the App Store, they all seem to have nits that make me want to get a rec from someone who uses one. So I go back to my "Go To" site, Digital Photography Review and post a note asking who uses these and which one is good. The rec comes back to install a Python script, pyexiftoolgui, that uses the EXIFTool that I already use (on Terminal).

Grrrr. But when I start pyexiftoolgui, it complains that it cannot find EXIFTool. Grrr. I already use a Python script, written by a local pal, to submit photos to an astrometry site, so I know that I have a usable Python installation. I search thru Applications (and the other Applications) and the files and cannot find EXIFTool! I think that I need to start pyexiftoolgui and navigate to EXIFTool and click on it, to show where EXIFTool is.

I can find all sorts of files (with Terminal) but wonder where EXIFTool is hiding.

Do I need to dig back through my Unix cheat sheets and find a Unix search command for the hard drive?

Charles

 

[MacInWin]

OK, I'm wading in pretty deep waters here, but could it be that the $PATH needs to know where the EXIFTool is located? This article give some advice on how to amend $PATH https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...-a-directory-to-path-when-using-zsh-in-sierra

Although it's for Sierra, it's also for zsh, which is what Terminal was moved to in Catalina. If you are still using bash instead of zsh, there should be something here: https://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/add-shell-path-osx/

Now I'm out of my depth, maybe someone with more Terminal expertise will chime in.

 

[CharlesPhillips]

OK, I'm wading in pretty deep waters here, but could it be that the $PATH needs to know where the EXIFTool is located? This article give some advice on how to amend $PATH https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...-a-directory-to-path-when-using-zsh-in-sierra

Although it's for Sierra, it's also for zsh, which is what Terminal was moved to in Catalina. If you are still using bash instead of zsh, there should be something here: https://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/add-shell-path-osx/

Now I'm out of my depth, maybe someone with more Terminal expertise will chime in.

Thanks, this helps. I am using the vanilla Terminal that comes with Mojave and that seems to be bash. Yes I think that the Python script just needs to know where EXIFTool is. Let me look at those links.

 

[CharlesPhillips]

Another step on another long, strange trip...

Harry van der Wolf now has a newer version of the application:

jExifToolGUI

jExifToolGUI

hvdwolf.github.io

and I am going to try that one. I guess I should also go back over to the Digital Photography Review site and put a note on that discussion.

Charles

 

[CharlesPhillips]

Another step on another long, strange trip...

Harry van der Wolf now has a newer version of the application:

jExifToolGUI

jExifToolGUI

hvdwolf.github.io

and I am going to try that one. I guess I should also go back over to the Digital Photography Review site and put a note on that discussion.

Charles

After some refreshing of my knowledge of Unix, so that I could find EXIFTool, I got this running.

Charles

 

[MacInWin]

Glad you got it sorted.

 

[CharlesPhillips]

So lets say that I wanted to write some sort of Apple Script or whatever is around these days (Automator??) to put photos in a folder and then run an application on each of them. This JExifToolGUI appears as an application in my Applications folder, if I ran it on a few photos in a folder that would speed things up a LOT.

How does one get started? I can see how I would get started if I was writing C or C++

Also, know anything about HomeBrew vs MacPorts? I run Gpredict, a Unix application, that I installed with MacPorts. Gpredict will not install on my Mojave machine so maybe HomeBrew would be a better option?

Charles

 

[MacInWin]

Here is the user manual: https://support.apple.com/guide/automator/welcome/mac

 

[CharlesPhillips]

Well I am back...

A pal who is a Python writer wrote a script to take the photos and submit them to Astrometry.net to "resolve" them, the photos reside in a folder. I run the script (which works well) and it logs me in to Astrometry.net with my API key then hands over the photos. The results, a FITS file, is plopped into another folder.

Now I want to have the script also run jExifToolGUI.app - that is in my Applications folder of course. It is a package of course and when I run the script from the Terminal:

Charless-Mini-2:1_observations_script Charles$ ./NovaAutomate.sh /Documents/1_observations
processing /Documents/1_observations/* in directory /Documents/1_observations
(/Documents/1_observations/*, *) filename: , extension: *
./NovaAutomate.sh: line 54: /Applications/jExifToolGUI.app: is a directory
Charless-Mini-2:1_observations_script Charles$

of course NovaAutomate.sh is the script.

Why does the script report that jExifToolGui.app is a directory (aren't all Applications actually directories??) and how do I tell it to run jExifToolGUI.app??

When I double click on jExifToolGUI.app - it opens like a well behaved application.

Also, the discussion earlier seemed to indicate that zsh was an improvement over bash - should I look into that? bash seems to be the default when you run Terminal.

Charles

 

[CharlesPhillips]

By the way, got the script to work great and launch jExifToolGUI.app and this is gonna save me a lot of time.

 

[MacInWin]

Glad you got it going. Good luck with it. Come back if you find anything.

 

[CharlesPhillips]

I need the script since I find too many satellites!