Astrotortilla - fail

[martin_h]

I have trying to get this working on and off for quite a while now and finally succeeded in getting it to solve an image, but the move to center said image is ...well......a bit off!

The Red marker is the initial position of the star, the green marker is the first move(in the wrong direction) the blue marker is where it finished and where it thinks the star is centered........close then !!!!!

[Thalestris24]

Hi

Some more information might be useful. How long did it take to solve? What exposure time? Are you running Stellariumscope/Stellarium? Make sure your eqmod is set to 'dialog based' rather than 'sync'.

Louise

[Sp@ce_d]

Interesting, I've been building a new lappy for the obsy and had some odd intermittent things like this going on with AT too.

sometimes it works fine.. solves in ~4 secs. others it's on target first time but then moves to a completely different part of the sky & either back to the target or then moves to the opposite side of the target & tells me it's solved. Very odd.

I'm about to rip it off & try a clean install.

I have a working installation I've compared it to on the old lappy but cant see anything amiss.

Hi

Some more information might be useful. How long did it take to solve? What exposure time? Are you running Stellariumscope/Stellarium? Make sure your eqmod is set to 'dialog based' rather than 'sync'.

Louise

Why dialog? I've used AT for a couple or so years adding sync points to EQMod fine on the old lappy.

[Thalestris24]

Interesting, I've been building a new lappy for the obsy and had some odd intermittent things like this going on with AT too.

sometimes it works fine.. solves in ~4 secs. others it's on target first time but then moves to a completely different part of the sky & either back to the target or then moves to the opposite side of the target & tells me it's solved. Very odd.

I'm about to rip it off & try a clean install.

I have a working installation I've compared it to on the old lappy but cant see anything amiss.

Why dialog? I've used AT for a couple or so years adding sync points to EQMod fine on the old lappy.

Hi

Why would you bother using sync points when you are plate solving? They become redundant if using AT and can cause problems when trying to do both (that might be hardware/software dependant but it has caused me problems in the past. Switching Eqmod to dialogue based cured it!)

Louise

[chrisshillito]

Hi

Why would you bother using sync points when you are plate solving? They become redundant if using AT and can cause problems when trying to do both (that might be hardware/software dependant but it has caused me problems in the past. Switching Eqmod to dialogue based cured it!)

Louise

Plate solving itself doesn't provide accurate gotos - it simply provides you with a sync point that EQMOD can then use to adjust the next goto. If you've gone to the hassle of plate solving to get an accurate sync point then it would seem a waste not to then use it as part of a wider n-point model. Now I appreciate you may have had some issues with eqmod's model but many folks seem to do just fine with it.

Chris

[Thalestris24]

Plate solving itself doesn't provide accurate gotos - it simply provides you with a sync point that EQMOD can then use to adjust the next goto. If you've gone to the hassle of plate solving to get an accurate sync point then it would seem a waste not to then use it as part of a wider n-point model. Now I appreciate you may have had some issues with eqmod's model but many folks seem to do just fine with it.

Chris

Hi Chris

But if you use Astrotortilla to solve a target chosen in Stellarium and  reslew to that target it will centre on the target. Nothing else is necessary.

Louise

[Merlin66]

It's sometimes amazing what you find....
I've been using AstroArt for the last seven years or so and I'd never used the built-in "Astrometry" function. This is similar to the plate solving, but maps the whole image into RA and Dec. Pretty neat, you can mouse over the image and see the coordinates for each and any object......
BUT based on the Manual, you need to define four reference stars and work with the built-in Star Atlas to identify them etc. A bit of a PITA.

However, there appears to be a "hidden" function! You define your image size and rough central coordinates, Select the "find coordinates" tab and just hit the "find" button.
In less than 2sec it gives the plate solve etc. Majic!!!!
Much faster than AT and the mouse over coordinates is very helpful.
Another brownie point for AstroArt.

[Earl]

I have trying to get this working on and off for quite a while now and finally succeeded in getting it to solve an image, but the move to center said image is ...well......a bit off!

The Red marker is the initial position of the star, the green marker is the first move(in the wrong direction) the blue marker is where it finished and where it thinks the star is centered........close then !!!!!

Have you tried doing this in sgp?

[Sp@ce_d]

Yeah think thats a good call... I'm just checking out SGP, I see theres a new local astrometry installer for windaes... install works great, solved an existing image no probs so far. Looks like it'll be 99 bucks well spent if the cloudwatcher can be integrated. If they get dual scope support implemented it'll be a no brainer. Even ACP cant do that!

I've just about given up in disgust with trying both 64 & 32 bit versions of AT on the 64bit lappy. Blown away & reinstalled several times with same results. Its worked fine on the old notebook for nearly 2 years. I see there's other reports of the same thing on the AT forum. I'm now seeing it stop waiting for the mount to slew but it doesn't..  fails to sync messages. It'll close normally but leaves the process running. You have to kill the process, go into EQMod & reset all alignment points to get it working again.. this is a 100% repeatable error. Once you do get it to solve it then slews away from the target to solve another part of the sky & either then leaves it there incorrectly solved or re-centers a few times to leave the target in one of the corners. I've been through checking settings against the working notebook setup & cant see anything out...

[Thalestris24]

Hi again

I had what sounds like the same problem earlier in the year. I think it coincided with moving to a 64 bit version. Anyway, there was a discussion about it back in March where I found that switching eqmod to dialogue-based cured the problem:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/210455-astrotortilla-problem/?hl=%2Bastrotortilla+%2Bproblem+%2Bthalestris24#entry2249789

Cheers

Louise

[Zakalwe]

Interesting, I've been building a new lappy for the obsy and had some odd intermittent things like this going on with AT too.

sometimes it works fine.. solves in ~4 secs. others it's on target first time but then moves to a completely different part of the sky & either back to the target or then moves to the opposite side of the target & tells me it's solved. Very odd.

I'm about to rip it off & try a clean install.

I have a working installation I've compared it to on the old lappy but cant see anything amiss.

That was my experience with AT. I installed it and configured it as per the Light Vortex tutorial. Sometimes it would work fine, solving, centring and synching. Other times it would just hang and need a Task Manager kill to shut it down. I changed to SGP, installed the local Astrometry server and that seems to work every time. IMHO, AT is great when it works, but just not consistent on my system (64 bit Windows 7, 3.2Ghz Intel CPU, 8Gb RAM)