Some progress in this vein: 1. installed astrometry.net (but without some graphical extras) 2. figured out how to create indexes! Finders are ~5x5', so based on this post I want to use ~2-3' healpixes. 3. I also should be using denser catalogs than the all-sky USNO B1, especially for infrared targets. So, here's a sample build command (using a CDS-based FITS table, but modified by me using atpy): build-index -v -i OMC1_optical_phot_DaRio.fits -o OMC1_optical_phot_DaRio_astrometryindex -N 1758