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