That's the issue I reported some days ago. The astrometry binaries really have problems. I tried to recompile KStars on Mojave but fails on Dbus.Anyway astrometry is recompiled in the process and it works ok replacing the binaries in the app dir.
The last astrometry that works on Mojave was the one included in the 3.1.1 DMG. You can replace the binaries with this version too.

Can you try this DMG as a test to see if the astrometry issue is resolved or at least improved. I worked this weekend on getting python better wrapped up inside the app bundle. This may not fully resolve the issue, but lets make sure it doesn't make it worse and check to see if it helps. Please let me know.

drive.google.com/open?id=19hX15yz1Ryr-xkJxsWKYWeb_y7vcDl6T

Thanks,

Rob

This one is better than the last one I just posted. The last one had python that was compatible with 10.14 Mojave computers. This should be compatible with everything down to 10.12 I think.

drive.google.com/open?id=1wmkuli2tjKK9GF3oZwnJznkIYWpx7OY_

Thanks,

Rob

I downloaded that second TEST version and tried the plate solving. I did not install GSC so the image produced by the CCD Simulator only contains garbage. Plate solving immediately fails and I am not sure if that is because of the missing GSC but I don't think so. The relevant log lines of the solver are

[2019-06-03T09:21:13.044 CEST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Image received."
[2019-06-03T09:21:13.104 CEST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "export PATH=/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/netpbm/bin:/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/python/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"
[2019-06-03T09:21:13.119 CEST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "export PYTHONPATH=/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/python/lib/python2.7/site-packages"
[2019-06-03T09:21:13.140 CEST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Starting solver..."
[2019-06-03T09:21:13.162 CEST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/solve-field -O --no-plots --no-verify --resort --downsample 8 -3 357.663 -4 90 -5 30 --config /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/astrometry.cfg -W /private/var/folders/jr/tcfsd52s5836dvkzvrk79bgw0000gp/T/solution.wcs /private/var/folders/jr/tcfsd52s5836dvkzvrk79bgw0000gp/T/fitshAxroR.fits"
[2019-06-03T09:21:13.182 CEST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Reading input file 1 of 1: \"/private/var/folders/jr/tcfsd52s5836dvkzvrk79bgw0000gp/T/fitshAxroR.fits\"..."
[2019-06-03T09:21:13.199 CEST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Solver failed. Try again."

When I execute the command in a terminal I get

$> /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/solve-field -O --no-plots --no-verify --resort --downsample 8 -3 357.663 -4 90 -5 30 --config /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/astrometry.cfg -W /private/var/folders/jr/tcfsd52s5836dvkzvrk79bgw0000gp/T/solution.wcs /private/var/folders/jr/tcfsd52s5836dvkzvrk79bgw0000gp/T/fitshAxroR.fits
Reading input file 1 of 1: "/private/var/folders/jr/tcfsd52s5836dvkzvrk79bgw0000gp/T/fitshAxroR.fits"...
Extracting sources...
Downsampling by 8...
No pixels were marked as significant.
significance threshold = 1.15099
max value in image = 0.423492
Downsampling by 2...
No pixels were marked as significant.
significance threshold = 1.15099
max value in image = 0.18831
Downsampling by 2...
simplexy: found 1 sources.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/removelines", line 15, in <module>
sys.exit(main())
File "/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/lib/python/astrometry/util/removelines.py", line 78, in main
cut=opt.cut, ext=opt.ext)
File "/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/lib/python/astrometry/util/removelines.py", line 40, in removelines
T = fits_table(infile, lower=False)
File "/Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/lib/python/astrometry/util/fits.py", line 672, in fits_table
pf = pyfits.open(dataorfn, memmap=mmap)
AttributeError: 'NoPyfits' object has no attribute 'open'
augment-xylist.c:589:backtick Failed to run command: /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/removelines /tmp/tmp.xyls.FcJF7I /tmp/tmp.removelines.U7Lvig
ioutils.c:567:run_command_get_outputs Command failed: return value 1


HTH, Wouter

Thank you very much for the test. The good news is that is not the same problem. It did more than just failing right away due to an ambiguous illegal instruction error. I will check into it.

Hi Rob,
tested the latest version you mentioned. Still get the same error message from image2xy:

(mw4) JUPITER:image mw$ /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/image2xy m51.fit
Illegal instruction: 4

in comparison to kstars 3.0.0:
(mw4) JUPITER:image mw$ /Applications/kstars300.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/image2xy m51.fits
simplexy: found 1408 sources.

So nothing changed. I only call that binary, no python nothing else to be used.

Michel

So I have some good news and some bad news. My attempt to create a new wrapped up version of python using virtual environments failed. There are several problems, getting the python built for older OS X systems, getting it to look in the right place for its site-packages, and making sure it can be moved and has no absolute paths. Unfortunately, when I change one of these things it breaks the others. Making the virtualenv python relocatable, means that it won't use the embedded directory for its site packages.

The reason it worked before using Homebrew was that I was building on a 10.11 computer and just copying the files into the app bundle. Also, I didn't copy everything, just the files it needed. That worked fairly well. But we need to build on newer computers for older ones. Homebrew and python just don't support that well.

The good news is that today I came up with a different idea. Astrometry.net doesn't have to rely on netpbm and python in order to work. It can also use a program called sextractor, which we already use in kstars to extract the star positions. Then astrometry.net can work with the coordinates of the stars. It would be far simpler than what I have been trying to hack together with embedded python and netpbm. I tried an initial test of it today and it is promising.

Nope, I spoke too soon. When I removed all my system python packages, it stopped working. So apparently either pyfits or Astropy.io.fits is required to use astrometry.net.

So I guess there are a couple of options.

1. Go back to telling the users/providing instructions on how to install homebrew, python, and all requirements to run astrometry in homebrew.

2. Try to build a similar setup to what I did before on an older system, zip it up, and copy it in when building on a newer computer.

For now if you want to get it working, since this is proving to be more difficult than I first thought.
The following commands will install homebrew, python3, Astropy, and numpy to your system.
The final command will delete my broken internal python.
Just type the commands into a terminal.
Plate solving in Kstars should work as expected.
I would still like to resolve this. I don't want users to have to do all this if possible.

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"
brew install python3
ln -s /usr/local/bin/python3 /usr/local/bin/python
ln -s /usr/local/bin/pip3 /usr/local/bin/pip
pip install astropy
rm -r /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/python/*

Thanks,

Rob

Hi Rob,

I think your are right to be able to use astrometry.net without python. I use image2xy to extract the star positions to XY coordinates and then using solve-field with a limited set of options. With that you should be able to walk from a FITS file to a WCS header with solved coordinates. I will be able telling you the options this evening.

Michel

Well astrometry is written for python. It’s programs use python to call other routines and other programs and it uses python modules to complete its tasks. I tried a variety of things that should have worked. But even tasks that you think should not involve python, throw up python errors when you remove it.

Rob,

had a look on the source of astrometry.net and agree. There is a mix of c and python and I have no clue how to separate this. So I'm with you and waiting the topics to be solved.
Many thanks for your work !

Michel