NINA cant solve my Plates ?

[Paul M]

In normal operation I assume NINA would pass the assumed coordinates of the object and image size to ASTAP. In stand alone, if there is no valid FITS header, you need to furnish ASTAP with the image size at the very least. Blind solving, with no approx position given is always more difficult. So if you told NINA to GoTo M45 and solve an image, even if M45 isn't in the frame ASTAP will know have an idea.

In ASTAP you can double click on either of the two RA / DEC boxes at top left (labelled as "α" and "ẟ") and it will open the box in the middle asking for object name. If you put "M45" in there and enter, it will populate those boxes with the coordinates of the Pleiades . ASTAP will begin its search in that area. The object doesn't even need to be in the image. Just within a few degrees helps.

Hopefully somewhere in NINA it will give you a calculated field of view size for your equipment. ASTAP needs that too. Here it shows the height in degrees of the field of view of my camera on my scope. This is calculated by APT in my case  and passed to ASTAP with the image but is then confirmed by successful plate solving. 

[Newforestgimp]

46 minutes ago, Paul M said:

In normal operation I assume NINA would pass the assumed coordinates of the object and image size to ASTAP. In stand alone, if there is no valid FITS header, you need to furnish ASTAP with the image size at the very least. Blind solving, with no approx position given is always more difficult. So if you told NINA to GoTo M45 and solve an image, even if M45 isn't in the frame ASTAP will know have an idea.

In ASTAP you can double click on either of the two RA / DEC boxes at top left (labelled as "α" and "ẟ") and it will open the box in the middle asking for object name. If you put "M45" in there and enter, it will populate those boxes with the coordinates of the Pleiades . ASTAP will begin its search in that area. The object doesn't even need to be in the image. Just within a few degrees helps.

Hopefully somewhere in NINA it will give you a calculated field of view size for your equipment. ASTAP needs that too. Here it shows the height in degrees of the field of view of my camera on my scope. This is calculated by APT in my case  and passed to ASTAP with the image but is then confirmed by successful plate solving. 

 WHOAH !!

I think you may have cracked it for me, i changed the FOV value from 1 to 2.5 gained from ASTRONOMY TOOLS and ASTAP said ....
Solved in 0.9 sec delta was 3.2
Warning scale was inaccurate! set FOV=2.32d scale=2.4"

Does that mean its set the correct variables for future use assuming i keep using my DSLR ?
I dont remember seeing a FOV option in NINA ? or is it calculating from the X Y and Pixel size variables ?

[Clarkey]

Yes, I think NINA calculates from pixel size, resolution and focal length. I got a similar warning when I changed camera but forgot to change the pixel size. It still solved, but the error went when I changed from 3.8 to 4.3um for the pixels.

[Paul M]

3 minutes ago, Newforestgimp said:

Does that mean its set the correct variables for future use assuming i keep using my DSLR ?

You can leave that set in ASTAP and it should persist for future solving, unless superseded by and images FITS header or by info sent from NINA. I don't know NINA so not familiar but does it have a setting for scope focal length and CCD chip size and pixel pitch? From  that it will calculate the image field of view to send to ASTAP.  

[Newforestgimp]

4 minutes ago, Paul M said:

You can leave that set in ASTAP and it should persist for future solving, unless superseded by and images FITS header or by info sent from NINA. I don't know NINA so not familiar but does it have a setting for scope focal length and CCD chip size and pixel pitch? From  that it will calculate the image field of view to send to ASTAP.

Yes it does, I set chip size in NINA but some reason pixel pitch was in there as some random number like 26.657627658265 so i didnt want to lose it, gawd knows where it got that from. I'm hoping that NINA will also save those settings upon closing but i will check next time i connect everything up for a test.

Cant thank you enough for helping me.

Clear Skies

Andy

[Paul M]

6 hours ago, Newforestgimp said:

Cant thank you enough for helping me.

No, thank you!

I've had little else to do astronomically other than play with software and hardware.

These kinds of puzzles give focus to the fiddling. It just so happens that I've spent quite a lot of time playing with ASTAP and it's stable mate HNSKY so felt that I might be some use on this occasion!

I remember when plate solving was an advanced tool and I'd skip over threads that discussed it. I wasn't trying to image then anyway so it was a foreign language.

Then I had a play with astrometry.net and opened up a whole new world.

Even if my images are dreadful I still get a kick out of sucessful plate solving. Like I arrived at another level!

[Newforestgimp]

I’m sorry to report back that I’m still struggling with platesolving via NINA, I’m now confident that ASTAP is working as expected and configured correctly, same settings transferred across to NINA yet images won’t solve from Nina.

ive loaded the captured images into ASTAP and APT and both solve the image using BLIND & with coordinate help.

I also noticed using NINA that PHD2 kept throwing an error ‘waiting for devices’ during its calibration, as soon as I closed down Nina it carried on past the step causing error & for much longer but sadly the clouds started to roll in and scuppered the evenings test.

Im at the point of kicking NINA in the butt and just using APT, I like the way you can point to a spot on the image and slew to it for framing.

[Clarkey]

It's a shame you seem to be struggling so much. I have no idea why NINA is not behaving. I have just moved over from APT to NINA and it is better when it works. As well as the framing benefits, I also like the auto focus option during imaging sessions. APT does work fine and has some good functionality but it cannot compete with NINA.

Have you contacted the forum / developers to see if they can help?

[Mr Thingy]

I couldn't remember which plate solver I am using in NINA, so I just checked. I use Platesolve2, which works fine for me.

Not sure on the differences in performance between ASTAP and Platesolve2 though, but the latter is doing a nice job in my limited experience.

[dunc]

Hi Newforestgimp,

In NINA I always forget to change Profile when I change scope, platesolve failure is my diagnostic! I have found that the platesolving in whatever app with whatever tool (I have used APT, NINA and now Voyager with Platesolve2, ASTAP, ASPS and I used to use Elbrus) always fails if I don't set the scope focal length in the appropriate place. Then it works.

HTH

[KRYPTON]

Just to add my input as I had the same problem with ASTAP it just would not solve. In the end I clicked on the "sum" icon then on the "Alignment" tab and in the FOV (height) box if you scroll down to the end you find "auto" I ran the solver on this and 20 seconds later success. It then populates the correct values for you.

Ken

[Newforestgimp]

I won’t give up with NINA but I’m using APT tonight to get used to the overall process, remember I’ve not plate solved or guided before used together for target acquisition and framing, and so far so good.

plate-solving and target cantering worked no issues, guiding failed a couple of times but changed the exposure time a bit and it then successfully completed calibration and started guiding consistently after a bit of tweaking the settings. It must be a night of firsts as it then went into a meridian flip ! It navigated it ok until it went to recentre the target then failed, so just got it going again using plate solving to navigate and centre, guiding restarted and it’s currently running. I’m not all that concerned with the image as such I’m just pleased to have used the whole process. 

[Mr Thingy]

2 minutes ago, Newforestgimp said:

I won’t give up with NINA but I’m using APT tonight to get used to the overall process, remember I’ve not plate solved or guided before used together for target acquisition and framing, and so far so good.

plate-solving and target cantering worked no issues, guiding failed a couple of times but changed the exposure time a bit and it then successfully completed calibration and started guiding consistently after a bit of tweaking the settings. It must be a night of firsts as it then went into a meridian flip ! It navigated it ok until it went to recentre the target then failed, so just got it going again using plate solving to navigate and centre, guiding restarted and it’s currently running. I’m not all that concerned with the image as such I’m just pleased to have used the whole process. 

Feels good just conquering the equipment, doesn't it?

I finally managed to get PHD2 working tonight, so now I have everything up and running, so I have the same feeling.