I'm a n00b on a quest towards astrophotography and I've been learning the whole stack for a few sessions now. I've been having random problems, some of which have been solved by the recent update and some because I realized my user errors. Yesterday however, I again ran into several random issues and I'm wondering if these are something that I could fix myself or if these are actual bugs in the software.

1. Optical Trains dropdown disabled</strong>

On random occasions the optical trains dropdown and the edit button is disabled/ususable. There's no default train selected so it's not possible to do anything else than restart KStars. Sometimes the restart fixes it, sometimes not. Previously I had the Snap version and it had no problems like this. Now I'm running the stable PPA. (Because the Snap version is not the latest)

2. FITS transfer format gets broken images

If the image transfer format is FITS (instead of Native), sometimes the frames are broken. Again, it's a random thing happening and sometimes it works. "Broken frames" here means that on the KStars FITS viewer it looks like gray noise without any signal. On Siril they looked all black. This is especially annoying since I think the Polar alignment/Solver tab automatically changes the transfer format back to FITS, even if I selected Native on the INDI control panel.

3. Sequencer frozen in the middle of a 30 frame sequence

I had a sequence running for 30 frames each having 60s. At some point I noticed that it was 10 minutes since the last frame and the sequence progress was 23/30 frames. After I clicked the stop button, whole KStars crashed.

It's going to be a clear sky here tonight, so if I could get any hints for these, I could try fixing already tonight. I'm a programmer myself so I can try to debug something if I get some instructions.

Also: Thanks everyone behind this software and forum. This stuff is golden!


My current stack is:
OpenAstroTracker
Raspberry Pi running Astroberry 2.0.4 on home wifi
Canon EOS 60D connected to RPi with USB

Ubuntu 20.04
KStars 3.6.3 from stable PPA (remote INDI Web manager connection to raspberry)
INDI 2.0.0
Using camera with Canon DSLR driver
Mount driver LX200 GPS

2. FITS transfer format gets broken images :

knowing which camera driver you're using may help. Also versions of kstars and indi, whether the indi server is remote or not, and what hardware.

Siril has a dropdown to autostretch the image which may help. Also image information->statistics can give you a rough idea of image data

I have succesfully shot and stacked The Comet last month, so I have also some understanding already about Siril and how the FITS files should look like. Also I've managed to occasionally get valid FITS files from the camera as well. Sometimes just something breaks and the files break.

Good reminder that I forgot the versions and other details. I'll update on the original post.

I just learned that my problem #1 with Optical Trains dropdown being disabled has something to do with the camera connection. If I get some log rows on the INDI Control Panel saying something about the camera, everything is fine. However if the log stays empty, even though it says connected, the optical trains dropdown stays empty. Also nothing else works with the camera at that point. I can fix the state by clicking Disconnect and again Connect on the INDI Control Panel. Looks like there might be something wrong with the camera connection initialization or something.

Hello Mikko,
Sorry to hear about your issues.
Some of these issues are also affecting Kubuntu 22.04 and there are some new and serious issues with the Optical Trains "forgetting" and re-appearing with nothing entered. I can see the explanation on the log files that I am submitting in the next half hour but I cannot understand them.
My new issues include Guiding (looses track of Guide Star but the capture is perfect) Alignments (the solver display says the error is 24848 arcsec, but it keeps trying for ever. After the Indi Control Panel is reset the next alignment window reopened it shows a perfectly aligned image and a perfect alignment result.
I have never had capture issues until tonight, but here's what I did. I downloaded a clean Kubuntu OS, and the latest version. Nothing improved, but the only common software item was StellarMate, So it's not worth you doing that also. We've come a long way from the RPi 3b at the mount and a RPi 4B in the house in 2017.
I am grateful for the years of progress that KStars development team have made and it seems like they offer a lot for free so I'm happy to hang in there and I know its probably only some small thing wrong... I hope...

Can everyone please edit their profile signature and add their equipment list and what OS / version they use? This would help immensely instead of asking each individual user.

A little bit out of topic, but please Jasem, could you point where the appropriate field for the signature is? After all those years, I still can't find it!

I found it from
My details -> Profile information and scroll all the way down