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Plate solving and goto with AstroTortilla

RogerTheDodger

By RogerTheDodger
in Discussions - Software

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  • 3 weeks later...
IanL

IanL

Posted
Posted

Still battling on with trying to get AT working on my setup, with limited success so far.

I was previously running V02.10.x and under Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, it was frequently hanging and becoming unresponsive. Typically it would whip through the first ten objects and a whole bunch of index files, then stall when it got to one of the last (large scale) files. If you waited a long time it would sometimes restart but then hang.

I removed everything and nuked the site from orbit. Re-installed the newer version 0.3 AT and re-installed CygWin (both in their respective folders in the root of the C:\ drive as permissions seem to be an issue for some). Since then no stalls or hangs, and can successfully abort a solve if I want to.

When downloading, I'd suggest going to http://sourceforge.net/projects/astrotortilla/files/ rather than using the 'latest version' link from the AT home page, which apparently doesn't always point to the latest version. (It says so on the home page, but I clicked it anyway and suspect that is why I started with V02.10).

Anyway, I am still not really having a huge amount of success with AT on my machine. I can take a JPG of a 5 or 10s exposure, upload it to astrometry.net and (provided the image is foussed and not too noisy) it will usually solve it. But using the local solver with the equivalent scale index files to those that solved online, my results are patchy, often it won't solve.

I have been playing with the parameters:

- Giving it a small range either side of the arcseconds/pixel found by the online solver or making it do a blind solve, doesn't seem to help much.

- Using different Sigma values (from 1 to 100), which definitely affects the number of objects found but doesn't seem to consistently improve results.

- Adding or removing different scale index files, everything from ones that should match the known scale to the full range of files that I determined in my previous post above.

When it does solve it can do so in about fifteen seconds, but more often than not it fails to solve. My suspicion is that it is picking up a lot of the small scale noise (DSLR images) and trying to solve those as if they are smaller scale features, rather than picking the bright stars that make the big and obvious large scale features. (E.g. I have some perfectly good 5 and 10 second M45 exposures that I cannot believe it won't solve).

I am using the 4000 series index files, which I know most successful users are not using as they have the old 200 series files which I don't have access to. The software is not throwing any errors complaining of corrupt files and is running through them with no problems now I am on V0.3 of AT, so I am at a bit of a loss.

Any suggestions of where to direct my experiments next gratefully received.

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Gasman

Gasman

Posted
Posted

Hi folks

Just trying to suss out Astroart 5 and I`ve just upgraded to 5.02 which now apparently has plate solving!. I was thinking of trying Astrotortilla but would I need to now?. I assume plate solving would be the same for any software which offers it or are some better than others?

Steve

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IanL

IanL

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Thanks for the offer of solving some of my images, but I made some progress today! I definitely have some sort of coma issue with my new LP filter between the DSLR and the SW 0.85 flattener/reducer, and it isn't totally consistne between images (it affects the left third of the image with inward pointing stars, but the right two thirds are round right in to the corners). I thought that this might be an issue, but there was a bigger one.

I was getting failures when I didn't set a min and max image scale, and it was taking forever to process and fail. When I did specify a min and max it was still failing but much quicker. I had set an app scale of about 1.7 to 2.something based on a previous online solve of a plate without the LP filter. I thought I had enough margin for error but apparently not. As soon as I upped the max scale to about 4app (and a sigma of 100 so I was only getting low tens of stars detected) I am getting consistent solves in about 5 - 15 seconds.

I assume that the image scale has changed by a lot more than I had guesstimated due to the LP filter (and maybe also causing the coma issues?), but progress at last. Strangely enough the same images still completely fail a blind solve when uploaded to astrometry.net, but I assume it is because they are noisy and it is not using a high enough sigma to kill it off.

Thanks all for the advice thus far.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Realt

Realt

Posted
Posted

Has anybody successfully installed the latest version 04........

I had version 03 installed and after a bit of faffing about I got it to solve some of the examples. Great,I thought, I just have to tweak a few parameters and I'm sorted-thanks to all who posted on this thread.

Fast forward a few days. I come back to AT and see that there is a new version. I uninstalled what I had and downloaded the new one. Everything seemed to go smoothly- indices installed in correct cygwin folder etc and now I am getting No solves in three seconds consistently.

I spent hours tweaking, uninstalling and changing parameters but always No solve in three secs.

Some sort of error message is flashing on UI but its too fast to read.

I have a feeling that there should be a log file somewhere which should give me a clue but I can't find it.

Any input would be most welcome as my head is a bit melted from it. :):huh:

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Realt

Realt

Posted
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Thanks.

I had actually found this but hadn't used debug mode.

Can't seem to copy text from log so have attached screenshot-(I know theres probably a more sensible way to do this.)

I am using the " file open dialog" to try to solve various locally stored images but it seems to be trying to use a camera.

If anyone can be bothered to look at the attached log and give an opinion I'd be obliged.

logfile.zip

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Realt

Realt

Posted
Posted

Looking at the log it's not recognising your input file type.. what format is it? The screen shots not wide enough to show the path

Thats what I would have thought but I've tried Jpegs and fits-lots of different ones and no joy.

I managed to solve some of my images with the original installation so i don't think the issue is there.

Think thats because it's trying to solve the local image then it goes to slew and solve to the target regardless if you have those options ticked or not from what I remeber

I think I may have tried all combinations of ticked and unticked but to no avail.

Thanks for input.

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Realt

Realt

Posted
Posted

I am beginning to think that all the installing and uninstalling has had some part in this. I have tried uninstalling with a third party uninstaller,removing all traces from registry and then downloading and starting from scratch-Same mullarkey.

I have another xp computer so I am going to try from scratch on that later. Fingers crossed.

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kirkster501

kirkster501

Posted
Posted

I am beginning to think that all the installing and uninstalling has had some part in this. I have tried uninstalling with a third party uninstaller,removing all traces from registry and then downloading and starting from scratch-Same mullarkey.

I have another xp computer so I am going to try from scratch on that later. Fingers crossed.

I a going to look into this AT malarkey as well - it looks extremely powerful.

Regarding XP. Sometimes with XP the only way to remove all the gunk is to reinstall. Got the T-shirt, 1000000 times as a ex Sys-Admin !!

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Realt

Realt

Posted
Posted

IT WORKS!!.YAY ME!!!

Did it on the original machine-

Got rid of all traces with a fine tooth comb-I had missed quite a bit after the previous uninstall.

Downloaded and installed version 4,set a few parameters and bobs your uncle.Its almost user friendly :grin: .

I can't wait to try it outside-

Thanks to all for useful info

.

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kirkster501

kirkster501

Posted
Posted

Downloading now :)

I take it that if you image with more than one scope you grab the index files in accordance with 20% the narrowest field and then the mex field? That's what its seems to imply and what i am doing.... :) So 3Gig of download. Wonder what speed this will run on my imaging laptop - a Core2 Duo with 4 Gig of RAM? Does this application swap to disk a lot? Could benefit from a SSD upgrade if that were the case.....

EDIT: The download site is very slow.... I will just leave it going all day and overnight if needs be

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IanL

IanL

Posted
Posted

Download the indices on a fast connection in the office if you can! it is worth spending some time calculating the correct set of indices that you need so that you don't have to download too many.

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