Local Platesolver for Astrometry.Net does not work

Issue #620 closed
Jerry Macon created an issue

The Local Platesolver for Astrometry.Net does not function in NINA. Also fails in the same way using All Sky Plate Solver to call it.
I have installed all the indexes, as recommended, down to 4202, although that is irrelevant to the problem.
Here is the problem: the Local copy of Astrometry.Net does not appear to be called correctly by NINA. I conclude this because no matter what combination of settings I use, I always get the same error message: "Platesolve failed to retrieve coordinates for image".
This error pops up instantly when I accept YES for "taken" the coordinates. BTW, its important to change "taken" to "used". This was very confusing for me. "taken" implies that the program is going to "take" a new image.
Anyway, the error message pops up immediately. There is clearly no call to Astrometry.Net (Local) to try to solve this image. The coordinates are in the fits header. ASTAP found them easily and solved this image within 1 second.
Here is an easy example to use for this, which ASTAP solves in 1 second. My example shows The solution ASTAP got in the background. It is Abell79 which has a lot of stars, with the same 22'x15' FOV.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!ApZRrk2grXleoKB8G1UrG3XZsl7caw?e=FyuvCJ
Abell79_Red.xisf
XISF File
Further indications that NINA is not calling Astrometry.Net: The contents of "Cygwin Directory" do not seem to have any effect on using this feature. I have tried all these variations:
F:\cygwin\usr\share\astrometry\data (where the index files reside)
F:\cygwin
F:\xxx (a non existent directory)
The error message is exactly the same for all three of these. Using F:\xxx I expected NINA to tell me that F:\xxx does not exist.
Normally I would use ASTAP exclusively because it is quite good. However, it fails to solve some of my Abell images that have few stars, but these images have all been solved successfully by the on-line Astrometry.Net. Hence my need to get the Local version working.
I have installed the g18 set of ASTAP indexes. ASTAP still fails to solve Abell47.
https://1drv.ms/u/s!ApZRrk2grXleoKB5towBw3UWp5CStQ?e=a1Lf9P
Abell47_RGB.fit
FIT File
Local Platesolve1
Local Platesolve2
As a final data point here: last night I imaged Abell47 again to get some RGB. ASTAP failed. My blind solver was the on-line Astrometry.Net. It solved within 2 minutes.

And I have installed ASPS which installed fine and downloaded it's own copy of the indexes.
Produces exactly the same error message, instantly after selecting YES to the message to use the coordinates. So instantly there is no way the Astrometry.Net code was called (or called correctly). In the past all my calls to solve an image require many seconds (using SGP), if not minutes, for Astrometry.Net to conclude that it can't solve the image. It clearly did not try.

Comments (6)

  1. Stefan B repo owner

    Also please set your log to debug or trace level, invoke the solvers again and attach the logs. thanks.

  2. Stefan B repo owner

    When using ASPS and pointing it to the correct exe file, i have just tried it out on one of my images and it worked just fine. I think this is a configuration issue on your side.
    However with ASPS i could also not get your image to solve. It has a small field of view and might be difficult to get solved.

    What did work tho, is using Platesolve2 with your image. You might want to have a look at that solver instead of the other solutions. It also solved in a couple of seconds too!

    As with this issue with ASTAP you might want to reach out to the astap forum, as NINA is not responsible for any of the solve results, but rather it just invokes the solver in question.

  3. Jerry Macon reporter

    I installed from this site: https://adgsoftware.com/ansvr/

    12644 is a successful solve by ASTAP

    15392 is a failure by Astrometry.Net

    It would seem I have an install problem, but none of the error messages are any help. It should at a minimum tell me if it is happy with the directory I have pointed to. It is not clear to me if that directory should contain the indexes, or the program.

  4. Stefan B repo owner

    setup problem. also available local astrometry.net windows clients are outdated by quite some time and other solvers like astap should be preferred

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