Thanks, that's a nice selection of very different images. Just the kind of testing we need.

I ran this on my 2015 MacBook Pro. Just had a handful of images on here. But I plan to load it on my Mac desktop and try it with a wider range of images and FOVs. These were done with only the default settings, on an 8" RC and 11" SCT. I'm interested to see how it works on a much wider FOV around 250mm with way more stars.

Thanks for this Ron,
I've just downloaded and built the Linux version on my RPi4 running Raspbian. That's the version as of the morning of the 27th April.

I've hand mixed results.

I had to change the ASTAP path to /opt/astap/astap because that's where it was on my system. Then ASTAP worked. Solved in less than 2 seconds.
All the other solves fail. At first I though that the problem was that there was an additional '/' in the index file path:Removed that and it didn't seem to make much difference.
BTW there doesn't sem to be an obvious way to save a changed configuration.

The internal SexySolver option crashes to the desktop after about a second.
I've attached a log from what's displayed after a couple of runs.
Is there a more complete log file I could return?


Hope this helps, if there's more I can do let me know.

Chris

Yes, Unix usually ignores multiple / in a path.
But I also had issues with a quick test. I had put the proper path to my index files in the config, but when I tried to solve it said it cannot find the index file?!
I could not track it down further so far, busy at work....

Chris, for your Raspberry PI issue, based on what you said, I would suspect the issue is the "inParallel" option. The folks at astrometry.net warn that you need to be sure that your system has enough memory to store all the index files you have in memory in order to use that option. It is typically disabled by default, but at the moment, I have the default as having it enabled by default. You can find that option in the options on the left at the top of the "Astrometry Config" tab. I'm pretty sure most Raspberry Pi's don't have enough memory to store all the index files you need for solving.

I might be able to add a check to see how large the index files in the directory are and how much memory is available before starting the solver and then a warning could pop up telling you about it instead of blindly going ahead with the solve

Nope as of now, I don't have a way to save the configurations. At the moment this program is really a tester program for the library so that we can work out all these issues whatever they happen to be. I might end up having to add an option to save configurations just to make testing easier.

Thanks for testing and providing feedback,

Rob

Der Pit,

Are you on a Linux System? I am not sure, do you have any spaces in your file path? I'm not sure if that would affect it? Also do you have a slash at the end of the paths?

Thanks,

Rob

I will add /opt/astap/astap as a path for ASTAP as well

Rob,

yes, this is Linux (openSUSE Tumbleweed). No spaces anywhere. First thought it had been the missing / at the end, but I just tried again. I have '/opt/astrometry/data/' entered as folder path, and the files in there are displayed in the area below (even without having the / at the end of the path). But when I 'Solve' with 'Internal SexySolver' selected I get the messageClassic Astrometry and external sextractor + external solve do work..

Yuck, just found it. It is not enough to enter the path in the text field. I have to click 'Add' and then browse through the file system to select a directory. Only then it is actually used.....
Maybe you should make the dropdown list non-editable.... Else Console-Junkies like I can get irritated

Rob, this is really great idea!
Attached please find my samples.
2 notes:
- Internal solving is not recorded (do not know why)
- ASTAP never works with default settings

It is actually editable. Try hitting enter after you edit the text field in the combo box. Let me know if that works.

Do you mean that it doesn't show up in the log? Yes that is correct because I haven't figured out how to direct the output to the log yet. But you can save the internal solver's output to a file. You will find those options on the left

For ASTAP, you have it all installed and it works correctly when you have used it in KStars or other programs? If so, then it's worth checkin out. If not, that is probably because ASTAP works very well and quickly with certain images and not others in my experience.

Rob,

a few thoughts/observations while playing with it:

• I am missing an option to limit the area of detected sources on the large end. If the main use is for focus and plate solve detecting galaxies etc is not wanted. (?)
• Depending on whether you want to compute focus or plate solve you need very different settings. For focus you'd reject saturated stars, for PS you surely have to keep them: If I set a 'Cut brightest' or too high saturation limit, plate solve fails or takes substantially longer (factor 10).
• Using the 'Min Cont.' deblending default of 1 (sextractor suggests .005) creates lots of double stars detected as singles. While it slows things a tiny bit you definitely want this
• Changing options in Star filtering basically don't affect speed by itself (unless of course HFD computation is on)
• HFD is expensive. Without further restrictions extraction time goes from 2s to 25s (in an image with some 15000 detected stars
• Sextractor options have the largest influence on detection time, mostly the Min Area. I'd expect a good estimate (based on scale?) for this to have good potential for speedup

Hope this is useful...