Wow, it's cool to see astrometry.net get put to use! I worked on astrometry.net back in undergrad and grad school. If you have questions about how it works, I can answer them.
How does it work? astrometry.net uses 4-star combinations to define codes, then indexes the codes on the celestial sphere. The particulars of each of these phases matter, but that's the basic idea.
I used to be in astronomy and I always thought astrometry.net was one of the coolest tools in the field. It feels about as close to magic as you can get.
Astrometry.net is damn handy. I don't use it too much these days for myself except for annotating images, but I do have some friends just getting into astronomy and it's blind solve is amazing to help them.
Plus when I show them plate solving their minds are blown. Hugely useful tool.
How does it work? astrometry.net uses 4-star combinations to define codes, then indexes the codes on the celestial sphere. The particulars of each of these phases matter, but that's the basic idea.