skyx pro: The astrometric solution failed.Error=655

[konstantinos75]

Hi

I tried to use the automatic calibration in skyx pro with tpoint addon.

First I captured a image with the camera addon, then I go to imagelink.

When I press the button "Find Astrometric Solution" I get this error

"The astrometric solution failed.Error=655"

I attach the fits image I loaded in the imagelink.

I cannot explain why I get this error. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you

vega.fit

[Oddsocks]

Error 655 means image link could not find any matching stars within its search radius defined by the current assumed telescope's RA and DEC pointing.

Uploading your image to Astrometry.net the site correctly identified the bright star as Vega and found matches for 38 other stars in the image so your source image should be good enough for tpoint & image link to solve but Astrometry.net searches the whole sky where image link only searches a small part of the sky based on where it thinks the telescope is pointing.

The astrometric solution in the Sky needs to know within a certain tolerance where approximately the telescope is pointing, as I have found myself with my Paramount MX, you need to create a basic pointing model first otherwise the tpoint - image link will fail, it does not search the entire visible sky for a star match only within a certain angular distance of where tpoint thinks the telescope is pointing.

So first step is to create a basic pointing model visually, using about six - ten stars spread as widely as possible, and then once the basic model is created you can use the automated tpoint- & image link to refine the model.

A good place to start if having trouble with image link and tpoint is the The SkyX Serious and Professional Edition Help here: 

http://www.bisque.com/help/TheSkyXSAEAndPro/index.htm#photo_requirements.htm=&t=Image_Link_and_Automated_Astrometry.htm

You should be able to follow the above link directly but in case not you may have to log in to the Software Bisque site first using your registered user name and password.

The Software Bisque user forums, accessed via the main site login have many entries for error 655, it is a common problem and most often not having a basic pointing model set up first is the reason, the second most common is having the image link detection threshold set too low so that image link identifies hot pixels or read noise in the image as stars and then fails to make a match.

It is always a good idea to check any problem image by uploading to Astrometry.net to see it they are able to resolve the image, if successful then you know either your basic pointing model is wrong or non-existent or the image link detection threshold is too low.

http://nova.astrometry.net

Finally image link & tpoint needs to know the image scale of your system before beginning the automated calibration run so you must take a single exposure and verify the arc-sec per pixel as determined by image link is correct, if not, you have to enter the correct value by manual calculation.