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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

is it me?

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is it me? was created by Michael

PLatesolving...

new mount, one that finally talks to my computer, so I am enjoying the finer things in life, like guiding, and autofocus, goto and such using Kstars on my MacBook

several weeks ago I had apparently beginners luck, and kstars and astrometry.net put the target reliably, and typically within a minute or 2, on my sensor. Not any more.

Last 2 imaging nights I had zero plates solved. tried multiple targets, different exposure times in the alignment/ solver module, played with binning and gain, returned to defaults, even reinstalled kstars. Nonetheless: zero success, zero plates solved....

uploads seemed to work, but astrometry.net always timed out without solving result. I don't think astrometry is down, or is it maybe not a very reliable service?

Last night I used one of my captures to upload directly to Astronomy.net/uploads, and within 15 seconds I had the result on my screen...

what do you suggest other than going to offline solving?
that requires lots of resources on my machine, that I would like available to work on other stuff, like pixinsights...

How fast is offline anyway, what is your experience?

Thanks
Michael
5 years 2 weeks ago #36181

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Replied by Wouter van Reeven on topic is it me?

The time it takes to resolve images greatly depends on the computer you’re using. In my experience plate solving using a raspberry pi takes between 30 and 90 seconds. Now I am using a mini-pc with 4gb of ram and it takes 10 seconds for plate solving and less than 30 seconds with downsampling included.

Can you elaborate on what goes wrong? Also please go to the playe solving options by clicking on the Options button to the lower right in the plate solving tab and tell us exactly all options that are enabled and disabled. I am confident we can help you get offline plate solving working and working at a more than acceptable performance.


Clear skies, Wouter
5 years 2 weeks ago #36183

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Replied by Wouter van Reeven on topic is it me?

Before I forget: getting a target within 30 arcsec is not a big deal, even with a FOV of 3 x 2 degrees.
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5 years 2 weeks ago #36184

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Replied by Michael on topic is it me?

so here is my setup: CEM60, Moonlite, ASI1600MM and ASI120(guide), TAL200K(2000mm/F10)
all connected to raspberry 3B, which runs only INDI server and PHD2
WIFI (Raspberry pings at better than 2ms)
inside iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014); 4 GHz Intel Core i7;16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

I believe at times Kstars was complaining about the Astrometry.cfg being corrupted or missing???


And Thanks for your help!

How do you like your WO71 BTW?
Last edit: 5 years 2 weeks ago by Michael. Reason: image upload failed
5 years 2 weeks ago #36185

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Replied by Michael on topic is it me?

tried to add a few screenshots, that failed too, B)

just tried Astrometry,with a minimally dynamic.cropped pic, took them about 45 seconds to return this page, which I included to show my FOV
Last edit: 5 years 2 weeks ago by Michael.
5 years 2 weeks ago #36186
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Replied by Wouter van Reeven on topic is it me?

The WO71 is due for replacement since it produces quite extensive blue halos. I hope the new 80 mm FPL53 refractor will remedy that. It’s a SkyWatcher Esprit 80 by the way.

That’s a very decent Horsehead by the way. Perhaps you should consider taking that white shirt off your telescope. You might be surprised to see the results you’ll get then ;-)

Any chance to reproduce the complaint about astrometry.cfg? Or perhaps enable debug logging and submit the logs so we can have a look? See Jasem’s signature for how to do that in case you don’t know.
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5 years 2 weeks ago #36190

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic is it me?

Michael,

Platesolving offline is SOOO much better than using the online service. When you get it all setup and working correctly, on your Mac it will take less than a couple of seconds to plate solve an image sent back from the raspberry pi. The online service is a tad bit unreliable and of course it requires an internet connection. Yes it requires some resources on your machine, but other than hard drive space for index files, the resources are minimal. Plus once you figure out the specific index files that you really need for your system to plate solve images from your setup, the file space is fairly minimal.

I spent a lot of time getting plate solving all figured out and then making it so it would be easy to use offline on your Mac. It is definitely worth doing.

Are you using the current version of kstars 3.1.0? or a past one like 2.9.7? If you are using 3.1.0, which was just released the other day, there is one mistake that I made in my build script where an internal file was named incorrectly. I'm going to build a new DMG with 3.1.1 this weekend. I already corrected the error earlier this week, but Jasem is currently doing some work on something with QHY and asked me to wait till he is done with that. If you would like to quickly fix the bug so that you can plate solve images now, you can run this command from a terminal window (assuming that you put KStars in the applications folder) so that you can start using it right now. You can also wait till I release 3.1.1 in a day or two.

The command: mv /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/python/bin/python /Applications/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/python/bin/python2.7

Thanks,

Rob
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5 years 2 weeks ago #36193

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Replied by Michael on topic is it me?

Thank you both guys, I always get terrific and substantive info here and I appreciate it.

(The white shirt trick I learned from David Hamilton, professional photographer from the 70s. helps to reduce the harsh contrast)

I am surrounded by at least 72 hours with clouds. so there is no rush here. I'll probably go the offline route then, but will wait until 3.1.1 is out...

In your experience, do I need to download the whole astrometry index enchilada?

I am asking because I am currently imaging with ASI1600 on my Tal F10/2000mm, But a refractorwith2 flatteners, F7.8/ 975mm, andF6.2/ 770mm is on the way. will have to buy another white shirt though...

Thanks again!
5 years 2 weeks ago #36196

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic is it me?

No definitely not. You can just download the ones that you need. With 3 different setups, that does mean more index files, but I can almost guarantee you won't need the 4200, 4201, or 4202 series. My recommendation is to upload some sample images from each setup to nova.astrometry.net and see what which index files it uses to solve them. I put an index file downloader into the Mac version of KStars, just click the sets you want to install.
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5 years 2 weeks ago #36198

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Replied by Radek Kaczorek on topic is it me?

Index Filename Range of skymark diameters (arcminutes)
index-4219.fits 1400–2000
index-4218.fits 1000–1400
index-4217.fits 680–1000
index-4216.fits 480–680
index-4215.fits 340–480
index-4214.fits 240–340
index-4213.fits 170–240
index-4212.fits 120–170
index-4211.fits 85–120
index-4210.fits 60—85
index-4209.fits 42–60
index-4208.fits 30–42
index-4207-*.fits 22–30
index-4206-*.fits 16–22
index-4205-*.fits 11–16
index-4204-*.fits 8–11
index-4203-*.fits 5.6–8.0
index-4202-*.fits 4.0–5.6
index-4201-*.fits 2.8–4.0
index-4200-*.fits 2.0–2.8

Source: astrometry.net/doc/readme.html
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5 years 2 weeks ago #36201

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic is it me?

You can see basically the same chart in the kstars index file downloader that I wrote.
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5 years 2 weeks ago #36202

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Replied by Ez W on topic is it me?

Definitely give offline a go. Much faster and much more reliable for me.
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5 years 2 weeks ago #36203

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