The plate solver is not actually used for urls from AstroBin or Flickr. All we’re doing is pulling in the data from the image. If the image is not solved on AstroBin it will not work. But you should get a message indicating that the URL was missing coordinates if that’s the case.
Thanks
Jared
This is the message I’m getting instantly. As soon as the plate solve image is downloaded it goes right to this warning. Is this the warning you’re talking about?
Everything was working perfect Monday night. Like I said earlier, I had a target on the chip after the initial slew to target. I then pressed center and It still failed to solve and gave the above warning. The image I had in the chip was Sirius. To give you an example of whre it was on the screen, it would have been located just to the right on the step 4 box in my screenshot. That would be close to the center of my chip on my camera.
I’m not saying my mount may be pointing a little off. I just want to be clear on what it’s doing and that I’ve had good success up until Tuesday night. I changed nothing between the two nights.
Bobby
Looking at Kens reply it sounds like your mount wasn’t close enough to the target to provide adequate hint data. When this happens you can do a blind solve to get the mount synced correctly or use Starry Nights or some other planetarium application to slew to a bright star and manually center and sync. Then use the centering through sgp.
I had misunderstood what you were meaning about using Astrobin with regards to the failures.
Thanks
Jared
Ok, I slewed to Sirius with SN7 (I only use Sirius for focusing. I’m not trying to image it). It shows up on the chip. I center and sync. I slew to the rosette nebula. I grab a reference image from astrobin that had dec,ra and image scale and it failed to solve. I slew back to Sirius and the above image is where the star landed on the chip from the rosette (I did not move the scope) As you can see with the second pic it still failed to solve with the star almost in center. So, what now? Is this a pinpoint issue, laptop issue. I’m using an Avalon M-zero mount and a Atik 314l+, WO Star71 scope and Starlight Xpress filter wheel.
Not really sure. Both images indicates that the mount isn’t connected to SN so I am not sure how you used SN7 to sync. Two images above, if you synced your mount to the sky with Sirius that far away from center at only 350mm of FL, that may be too imprecise for PP. That said, it looks like you solved a couple times, but your solve position looks like it was RA 0, DEC 0 so that’s probably a bad solve.
Not sure what this means. How? With SN7 or with SGPro?
Not sure what this means:
If your mount, after a solid sync, is not capable of slewing to a nearby target and then back to the point of sync with any amount of precision, your only recourse is to setup a backup blind solver (ANSVR).
Lastly, pictures are nice and all, but we can’t effectively debug with them… please include logs.
I connected to SN7 before any other program a slew to Sirius and synced on the star for alignment.
I can’t be connected to both SN7 and SGP, so I disconnected SN7 and connected to SGP to try to solve the image.
I slewed to the rosette to check if my mount was not slewing properly. I tried to plate solve on the target and it failed. so, I went back to Sirius to check accuracy of the mount again.
Why does the plate solve tab ask for a picture from astrobin or flikr? I assumed you grab a url from either site to use as a reference pic.
I’ve also tried to solve thru the mosaic wizard with fails as well. I use the reference image that the mosaic provides.
I’m not apposed to using a different service. PP is a lot of wasted money if its not going to work.
I used just the pictures to show how close to center the target was to the center of the chip. How close does it need to be to get a good solve? center of the chip?
You don’t have to provide one. That’s just one way of setting reference data for a target rather than specifying the coordinates or a file.
Can you solve through Pinpoint directly?
If you use the image below as a target reference will it solve?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i45srazuw9r6l0o/MonkeyHead_Ref.fit?dl=1
Also logs would be helpful. Otherwise we’re just guessing.
Thanks,
Jared
I was able to solve the monkey head image. I even ran a blind solve and it toko 14s to solve. I have not had a chance to try visual pinpoint yet.
I did notice with the image you provided that it showed an amount of stars that it detected. It does not do this when you using a reference image from astrobin.
Any solution yet? A refund?
I’m confused… Is this Bobby using 2 different accounts?
No. Same Bobby. I’m really at a loss. I’m not understanding how something is working one day and gone the next. I’m not blaming you, just looking to find a solution to my problem. Someone could make good money being a tutor in this hobby. 
Ya. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any other advice for you at this point. Please PM us and we’ll refund your money.
Hey Bobby, do you have teamviewer? Maybe I could connect to your setup while your imaging and check it out. It might be something simple that doesn’t translate in a log.
I could get it. I’m up to giving it a try.
Ok. I’ll send you a PM.
After downloading the latest beta version for 2.4 and using a one star alignment with my mount, I was able to successfully plate solve last night. I’m also using astrometry.net instead of pinpoint. I still have no idea why It wasn’t solving before (even when the target was within the FOV of the camera chip). For now Its working perfectly. Just wanted to let everyone know who gave suggestion.