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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

optimizing plate solver

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Replied by Mark Copper on topic optimizing plate solver

Thank you. Cloudy here tonight. I'll work through suggestions at first clearing.
2 years 6 months ago #75884

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Hello Hy,

I haven’t changed anything in my settings or my setup and after the upgrade I get this and it’s just not platesolving at all. My numbers seems to be ok. Where I have to look?


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2 years 6 months ago #75902

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It''s hard to tell from your description, but at least from the rough picture, I only see one star in the image. Could that be the problem? Does the image look OK to you in person? E.g. wait till darker, use longer exposure or gain, ...? If you capture an image with the same settings and upload it to astrometry.net, does it solve there?

I don't think anything changed with respect to plate solving / polar alignment in this release.

I don't have much experience with such a wide field of view, but as you say, it worked before.

Hy

Hy
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2 years 6 months ago #75903

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Yes practically you can see only Polaris, because is much brighter than the others (and also from my bad iPhone pic).

Folowing your tips from precious posts, those settings worked like a charm before without a single issue. Platesolving between 2-4 sec maximum. But now always fails.

I've switched to online astrometry and worked - of course extremely slower ..

In addition to that - and probably that causes the issue - now a message appears (Polar Alignment tab):

"DISABLED: FOV must be 10 arcmins or wider. 60+arcminutes is recommended."

What is that? Where do I have to look for that? Cause all my numbers are the same wherever I look.

Also, the direction option is disabled.
Last edit: 2 years 6 months ago by Euripides.
2 years 6 months ago #75904

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Hy,

I'm experiencing the same thing. As I mentioned in my post about testing SM 1.6.0, I could not get the internal plate solver to work (I attached the logs). I changed to Astrometry and it all worked fine. I've had no problems with the internal solver until KStars 3.5.5.

Ron
2 years 6 months ago #75908

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I also had "DISABLED: FOV must be 10 arcmins or wider. 60+arcminutes is recommended." several times after updating to 1.6.0.
Only on one of my two setups, however.
Reboot helped.
I blamed a flaky USB cable connection.
-- Max S
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TPO RC6. FRA400. Rokinon 135 and other lenses.
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2 years 6 months ago #75911

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Ron, @Euripides: I'm no expert on plate solving, but am willing to work with you to figure this out.

First, the message "DISABLED: FOV must be 10 arcmins or wider. 60+arcminutes is recommended." is worrysome.
I looked at the code, and that's output when, just as it says, it calculates the FOV too small. It calculates the FOV from this formula:

    fov_x = (206264.8 * ccd_width * (ccd_hor_pixel / 1000.0) / focal_length) / 60

where 
- fov_x is in arc-minutes, 
- ccd_width is the # of pixels along the width of your imager, 
- cc_hor_pixel is the width, in microns, of your pixels,
- focal_length in mm.

So, for instance, in my setup with FL=2000, px=3.8, ccd_width=4656 I get fov_x = 30 arc-minutes.

Check the Indi window for your imager to make sure the value is good.
Here's mine, for my ASI1600, correctly set at 3.8 microns and 4656 pixels
 

Next, assuming there's no issue there, we can go into testing the plate solving itself.
Ekos could definitely use an easy way to debug plate solving, offline, during the daytime, etc.
Here's one way to do it, not as easy as it should be, but a start.

- Capture an image (in the capture tab) with the same exposure/gain/etc as you're using with Align. This will be out test file for further investigation.

- Switch to the simulator

- Jasem introduced an interesting feature in the simulator a while back, where it can replay images from a directory, instead of creating images.
You can find that if you run the simulator profile, and start up Ekos. Go to the indi tab labeled 'CCD Simulator' and inside there go to the tab labelled 'Simulator Config'.
At the bottom you will find ''Use Dir". Enable that. Note the directory location on the above line, and put your test fits file in that directory (and temporarily remove any other files 
that might be in that directory--you probably won't have any there). Now, when you run the simulator, it should always "replay" that fits file as the new capture. Remember to uncheck that 'Use dir" button later, or just don't save this configuration.

- For sanity's sake, capture a few images with the simulator. You should always see your test image.

- Go to the align tab, Use 'Capture and Solve' with Action = 'Nothing'. It should try to solve your image, and now you can play with parameters to get it to solve.

Note, you probably will also need to configure the simulator to have the focal length and ccd parameters for your real system where the image was captured. 
Enter the CCD stats on that same 'Simulator Config' page as above, and the Focal Length on the mount tab.
I think you're safe that changing these things on the simulator won't affect you when you go back to your "real profile", but please double check.

If you can't get a fits file to solve, please upload it somewhere and let me (and any others) have a crack at it too.
Of course, if you do that, send the relevant image parameters (focal length, pixel size, num pixels).

Good luck,
Hy
 
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2 years 6 months ago #75912
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The FOV message is quite odd given what FOV on the left appears to be OK. I couldn't reproduce this message thus far using a variety of profile. If you delete and create a new profile, same issue?
2 years 6 months ago #75919

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Thank you Hy,

Done all that, no luck with the internal solver. ASTAP and online solves ok.
2 years 6 months ago #75920

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Hello Jasem, 

I've just erased completely the profile and create a new one. Same issue with the FOV and now I can see the error message on the bottom.


PS. Those numbers are correct.


 

 
Last edit: 2 years 6 months ago by Euripides.
2 years 6 months ago #75921
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The warning message is an indicator that something is wrong. Can you go to Image Info tab of the camera INDI Control Panel and check that out? also the mount module, what's the focal length listed there?
2 years 6 months ago #75922

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Certainly! But I can't understand why and where else to look (beside that fact that nothing changed).

All those numbers looking good to me.

Certainly! But I can't understand why and where else to look (beside that fact that nothing changed).

All those numbers looking good to me.

  
2 years 6 months ago #75923
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