I’ve been using Platesolve2 since it came out in beta with no problems until now. Last night PS2 failed to solve every time, even after the mount was synced correctly with local astrometry.net
Until last night I was imaging with my SV152 and plate solves worked fine. Last night I changed to my SV80 and the solves failed. The image scale is set properly and again blind solves work and solve within about 20sec.
Looking at the LOG FILE there doesn’t seem to be any indication why it failed. See 8:27:56 for the first PS2 failure.
The problem is that it takes nearly 4min for PS2 to fail before astrometry kicks in. At the scope that feels like an eternity.
I have seen PS2 fail in certain regions of the sky… that’s the only explanation I have for “working” to “not working” with no change in software or hardware. In terms of time, You have 999 regions set to search and it looks like it’s taking that long to execute. I can’t really tell.
[10/6/2015 8:47:11 PM] [DEBUG] [Telescope Thread] Auto center scope frame failed to solve.Solve failed! Maximum search limit exceeded.
What I observe is that PS2 goes through the search and after about 4min
will fail. It is set to search 999 regions as you said. Is that
adjustable or recommended to adjust?
Well I started my sequence tonight and all the solves are completing in about 2sec. I can’t explain it. This is the exact same sequence, nothing changed between last night and tonight. Did a solve and sync and then center target (2 iterations) and PS2 solved them all very quickly. Wierd.
I can’t help you with why Platesolve2 didn’t work. However, I can suggest you reduce the 999 attempts - that is the default - to 100. I did a lot of testing and with my scopes it rarely solves after 100 attempts - so why waste the time waiting for it to reach 999 before it goes to astrometry.net?
Just a thought…
You changed scopes and it looks like you went to a smaller aperture. When I switch scopes about I also switch the image time to get a solve but not to long as to waste time. I have had 3 second espousers not solve with smaller OTA but did just fine with 5 second exposer. Did you have better weather/seeing conditions the second night when thing went well?
Thanks Tim, I’ll try reducing the attempts to 100 and see how it goes.
Steve, I did indeed change scopes, going from 6" refractor to 80mm
refractor. Sky conditions were probably about the same. I’m using 7sec
exposures for both scopes, but I could bump it up to 10sec and see what
happens.