Plate Solve Failure

I have had very few plate solve issues with SGP but last night it would not solve in the Rho Oph area at 1000 mm. It seemed fine everywhere else that I tried. I am using Pinpoint as I have that - it fails but Astronomy.net works fine, albeit more slowly as one would expect.

Since Pinpoint is local and faster that would be better, any settings worth messing with? I have tried both GSC and USNO 2, both worked fine in the other test areas but not on the Rho images despite being dead on by visual examination of the images vs TheSkyX. Pinpoint is V5…

There are not a lot of stars in the area, perhaps that is it…

I also noted the thread on local Astronomy.net usage. I may try that.

Hmm, I now see that I should have put this in the Plate Solve area - sorry, new to this forum!

I would try upping your exposure time. Generally 5 seconds through a lum filter is sufficient. But if you’re in an area of sparse stars you may need to increase the exposure or the binning (or both). Also having the failover is very nice. It at least gives you a second shot at it. I would recommend leaving Pinpoint there though and just using Astrometry.net as a backup.

Thanks,
Jared

Actually, I did try a full 120 seconds with a dark just to be sure and it still failed.

There is the other way… I have trouble with it if my exposures are TOO long. I find 15 seconds is good @ f/7 600mm.

Try using my install of Astrometry.net. The instructions are really easy and it works 99.9% of the time.