Failed Plate Solving & Polar Alignment

[Billysharpcap]

Hi All,
I have been using Sharpcap Pro for a few years now and it's been fantastic. Lately though, plate solving fails (in the real world, test seems to work) and I can't get polar alignment to advance to the next section after it has found stars. I have attached image of Sharpcap polar alignment session were it sits there with only 15 stars used. Most of the red boxes have stars in them but only 15 ever get used.
I may try uninstalling again but hopefully it's a bit of user error - Sharpcap has always been rock solid for me.
Thanks,
Bill.

[admin]

Hi,

it certainly looks like the stars are being detected OK, so the two main possibilities for failures are

* You're pointing more than 5 or 6 degrees away from the pole, which puts the stars in view outside SharpCap's polar alignment data area

* The field of view is small (less than 1/2 a degree in each direction).

Since you had it working in the past, I'm suspecting the first. In either case, a good way of checking is to save an image and upload it to https://nova.astrometry.net/ - that will do a full sky plate solve and let you know how far from the pole it is and what the field of view is.

cheers,

Robin

[Billysharpcap]

Thanks Robyn,
I will give that a try, just to confirm, I have a permanent observatory setup with the same camera, scope, mount setup that has worked previously. I will let you know either way how I go.
Appreciate the reply.
Cheers,
Bill.

[admin]

Hi Bill,

of course, if you get a saved frame that does turn out to be in the right area and the right FOV then please share it with me and I can try to work out what is going wrong.

thanks,

Robin

[Billysharpcap]

Hi Robin,
It's taken a little while but I thought I would reply to close this out. The issue was 100% user error and exactly what you suspected, I was way off with the position of my mount. The problem is that its has been months since I have been in the observatory and I had totally forgotten that I installed a new base plate so everything was out of whack. In addition, I was polar aligning at 3000mm which is not an easy thing to do due to very small adjustments required but Sharpcap does make PA at high magnification quite easy. Anyhow, all my fault!
Appreciate the help as always.
Cheers,
Bill.

[admin]

Hi Bill,

thanks for reporting back - good to hear that it is all resolved now

clear skies!

Robin