Ok…there is something seriously weird with Pinpoint…
All this time Pinpoint was solving withing 15sec and even yesterday and even today as I was solving NGC6992. Then…I parked the mount…and after 10min when I return to the same target pinpoint was not doing a thing. I turned to a bright star, played with bin, uped the exp time…nothing.
Any experience with something like that?
I’ve seen it fail before. Did your local astrometry server pick up the slack?
Ι tried it. Didnt work. Funny thing…next…same target…solved it in 5 sec.
This cannot be a random event. I didnt want to switch off camera cooling and reboot the computer…but I am certain that if I did…it would have solved the problem.
Yea, that’s usually the case. Honestly, I haven’t had a problem in ages with Pinpoint. I know it’s not helpful. Did you try solving the plate solve image manually in Pinpoint? It also is a bit strange it couldn’t solve in Astrometry… astrometry usually solves just about anything.
I did not try solving it manually cause I wanted to see how I could make it work. Astrometry didnt solve it cause I am convinced it wasnt a matter of difficulty. Pinpoint solved the same target 15 min before that problem and solved it the next day…in 5 secs.
It was a glitch
I don’t believe in glitches with software very much. I’m sure there was some ‘tweak’ to the image that caused it not to plate solve. I’m glad it’s working now. Hopefully you had recovery mode running so it didn’t wreck a night of imaging :).
Well the fact that it was solving the same target 5 minutes before sure sounds weird to me …then the FW drivers collapsed…and when I reinstalled them…no solving…thats what I mean by glitch.
The image was crystal clear…well…computers…go figure
Yea, I hate them too 
Go to the SBIG Yahoo! Group and read about the STF/STT8300s and the ‘dropped frame’ issue due to Window’s USB driver. Apparently if I used linux, I wouldn’t have a problem.
