After a GoTo, how does the mount know precisely where it points? Plate solving takes a short exposure, extracts star positions, forms geometric triangles between them, and matches those patterns against a catalog of billions of stars. In 1–3 seconds it returns your exact coordinates to sub-arcsecond accuracy, and the mount corrects any residual error. Solvers: Astrometry.net (open source, offline), ASTAP (fast local, great with NINA), All-Sky Plate Solver. It removes star-hopping entirely: GoTo → solve → correct → center, even if the initial alignment is off by degrees.