n late July I had several nights where plate solving worked at 80% or better. I was able to create several sessions that worked well. After a break night before last I restarted observing sessions; I was midway through alignment and plate solving abruptly stopped working. For the first portion of alignment it worked very well, then suddenly it dropped from 90% plus to 10%.

I tried three different methods, internal, astap, and external with similar results. I tried saving images and then trying to solve them from files, this worked better. I tried last evening for over 2 hours to complete an alignment without success, it would start and solve none, one, and infrequently 2 plates before failing. It never completed 3 plates.

The setup is simple, a SkyWatcher 100ED and a modified Canon 1300D. The images visually should work; there are several dozen to 100 plus stars and the background is clean. Focusing is good and tracking is good.

I looked for an astap error log but could not find one. Are there logs? Is there a ways to monitor plate solving? Is there a way to better isolate the issue? Is there a way to better break the process into 'steps'? I can see the astap processing window flash but cannot see it before it errors.
Thanks in advance, Dan

This is under an incorrect topic area, it is not Stellamate but Stellasolver. I do not see a way to chanbe tha.

One thing I'd like to see is a time limit on solving. On rare occasions I see stellarsolver (on both my stellarmate and stellarmateX) get hung up for a long time while trying to solve. If I stop the solution process and let the scheduler retry it succeeds right away. Even a blind solve shouldn't take that long.

Chris,

The time limit on Solving is in the StellarSolver settings.


I believe there are one or two place where the timeout is shortened to a quicker timeout (e.g. one is in the polar-align refresh where the timeout is ~10seconds because it first attempts to use the same index file are previously solved).

Hy

Plate solving is still failing, I tried for 45 minutes last evening to get it to work. I tried exposures from 1 to 10 seconds, iso form 100 to 1600 and binning from 1 to 3x3. It worked about 30% of attempts.
I saved several of the failiors and tried to solve them in stand alone astap, those were by in large succful. Are there kstars configuration parameters that feed online astap? Is there an astap error log?

Thanks. Mine was set to the default 600, but that also seems to have not aborted the extra long solve attempt illustrated above. I've set it to 60 now, and I'll leave logging turned on in case it happens again. It's pretty rare... maybe once a month it feels like.

We have 2 threads in one here. As the OP is there a way to separate them? The original issue still remains a problem.

Is there documentation fof the parameters above?

Hi Dan

Did you try the source extraction method 'Internal SEP' together with Solving Method 'Local Astrometry'? I'm getting best and fastest results with this combination. (However you have to download all the required index files.) BTW, did you activate and update 'Use Scale' & 'Auto Update' and 'Use Position' & 'Auto Update' in 'Scale & Position' of the solver options?

Which 'Solver Profiles' do you use / did you try?

Concerning ASTAP, I used to run 'astap' directly (standalone) for better insights. (I have to remark, that ASTAP failed always with focal distances > 2700mm!)

Thank you. We had company and am now waiting for clear skys. Friday night is looking good. I will try these.

I have the same problem. Last week I updated my Pi, (Stellarmate) and plate solving become imposible. I run everything on the Pi, and never had any problem before.
I tried all the different methods, but nothing worked. Quite frustrating...

The only thing that was updated was default Align profile. It's not set to "Default" instead of "Small". Changing align profile makes any difference?