SC 4 fails to platesolve, SC 3.2 does platesolve

[Menno555]

Hi Gernot

It's not required. As far as I know, the option to add your focal length only makes the solving faster. It narrows down the search through the astrometric data. But maybe the difference indeed is too much in your case and the search is within a certain range of the FL and then stops. Robin could tell you that.
But indeed it could do no harm to set that to Do Not Use and then the search will be done through all the astrometric data you have.

Menno

[admin]

Hi,

yes, Menno is right - specifying the focal length in an option that you can use to make plate solving much faster (the solving engine doesn't have to try all the different image scales if it knows the F/L and hence field of view). If you specify it wrongly then you will get failures as you are telling the plate solver the wrong information about the field of view - see https://docs.sharpcap.co.uk/4.0/#Config ... %20Solving

Having looked at your image files I can see that they also may cause problems as they are too dark (underexposed). You can only see the stars in them with a significant stretch to the image. This works for plate solving as long as the image stays in 16-bit, but if it is converted to 8-bit then the loss of information is enough to stop the plate solver from finding any stars. I would suggest turning up the gain quite a bit to make the stars visible without needing a stretch to avoid this problem.

cheers,

Robin

[GSchreider]

Thanks a ton Robin and Menno,

I very much appreciate your help.
I am aware that my exposure is too low, need to work on optimizing exposure anyway.
I am happy that the "bug" turned out to be user error.
Thank you also for the great work you are doing with SC !

Cheers
Gernot