Hi Nick,
Maybe I misunderstood your problem but I experienced also crashes and I found a solution that I reported here (www.indilib.org/forum/ekos/11081-mac-kst...e-test.html?start=48):

Hi everybody,
I have experienced also intempestive crashes of KStars since a few months and I reported it.
The crashes occurred especially while running the simulators.
I think I finally found the culprit : kstarsrc
This file kstarsrc is located (on a Mac) at Library / Preferences / kstarsrc. It contains all the user preferences.
I deleted this file and I've got no crash since in the simulators profile or the real profiles.
I recommend not to delete immediately this file but saving it by changing its name.
When you will start KStars again, the Startup Wizard will open and will recreate a new kstarsrc file.

Maybe this might help you

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