Unable to platesolve with a different scope

Hi all,

I have been experimenting with an RC8 (1624mm FL) recently and have not been successful with platesolving. Previously local or failover platesolving has never failed me when I was using a TSA120 (<900mm FL). I tried changing the image scale in the Camera tab and Telescope tab, but it made no difference.

I follow instructions to install local ANSVR solver and solving locally, no luck. Through SGP’s remote astrometry.net solver, no luck, needless to say the default PlateSolve2 is also no luck.

Here are 2 log files. One from last night (plate solving was around 21:45): Dropbox - sg_logfile_20190426214301.txt - Simplify your life, and one from now (the entire session is for platesolving): Dropbox - sg_logfile_20190427164930.txt - Simplify your life.

I also tried to solve the image via astrometry.net website, and that worked, here’s a screen capture of it:

Please tell me what I am doing wrong. Thanks.
Brendan

Remember that the Astrometry.net website has all of the indices one could ever want. You likely only have a subset based on the FL of your old scope. Re-run the installer for ANSVR and ensure you have the proper index files for your new FL.

As for PlateSolve2, I cannot comment. Long FL solves can get flaky… If you want, post your image to dropbox and see if other can solve it with PlateSolve2. This will at least let you know if it is a solver or a settings issue.

I think you’re right about flakiness. Last night PS worked like a chap, straight off the bat. Tonight, no joy whatsoever. It was the same target, same file, same everything, just with better sky tonight when it decides not to work :frowning: If PS2 is flaky, what’s your recommendation?

Here’s the image file for anyone whose interested to try on their SGP. Astrometry.net (the website version) works fine, but not PS2 and ANSVR.

One thing I wasn’t sure about the installation of ANSVR was downloading the index files. At the moment, the narrowest FOV was selected to be the arcmin option with the range that falls into my longest scope (one in question) narrowest FOV. But not sure if that’s enough, or I need to choose one that is 0.2 x narrowest_fov?

Also, if PS2 won’t work well with long FL, what’s the alternative?

There is always Pinpoint. It is a paid product and has support.

I can’t get plate solve to work in SGP, because even though I change the exposure length in the dialog, it only takes a one second exposure! The same plate solver works great in APT. I was really looking forward to using SGP for everything, but it’s not working so far.

Did you change the value in the Control Panel or did you change it in Equipment Manager? In Equipment Manager you will not see the effect until you apply it to your sequence.

I’m ok with paying for it, but does it have better performance than PS2 or any of the other free PlateSolving suites?