Plate solving advice needed-can I test it in daylight?

[Quetzalcoatl72]

I can platesolve quite well at home because I use Astrometry.net, but when I eventually go out where there's no internet I will have to rely on other means and those do not work properly. I use NINA mainly, I have no time to learn how to use APP and it's not free, not enough dark skies to waste by testing it out. I have installed ASTAP, All Sky Plate Solver and PlateSolve2, I have no idea how to use these on their own but on NINA I have ASTAP set up as my plate solver which doesn't seem to work, I have the file locations correct, because it does run it but then fails and Astrometry boots up as the backup.

I cannot waste any nights I've been waiting 4 months for a clear night, so I'm wondering if there is a way I can sort this problem out without having to set up? I'm planning to use sharpcap for recording the planets tomorrow night so I technically don't need to set up a lot of things, but I would like to find neptune right away and plate solving would definitely help with that.

Any help is much appreciated thanks.

[CedricTheBrave]

have you downoaded the Astap database files?

you can use any star image to test it when offline or in the daytime

Edited September 6, 2021 by CedricTheBrave
add info

[Quetzalcoatl72]

9 minutes ago, CedricTheBrave said:

have you downoaded the Astap database files?

you can use any star image to test it when offline or in the daytime

I've got 1476 h17 files in the astap folder if those are the right ones

[Paul M]

I don't know NINA, I use APT with ASTAP.

With APT I can load any suitable image into the viewer and either blind plate solve or give some approximate RA/DEC for the object and just ask it to solve.

I guess NINA will have a similar ability to load an image and solve it.

The main point with ASTAP is to tell it the image size in Deg/min/sec. If you open ASTAP as standalone and click "stack" then "alignment" you will see a box where the image size can be input.

Also on that page is a "Downsample" tab. With my ASI178 camera I used to have to have that at "2" else it would time out. 

Any changes you make should persist after closing ASTAP and be effective when ASTAP is called by APT. With APT the sensor size and image size are forwarded to ASTAP if a camera is selected in APT.

Edited September 6, 2021 by Paul M

[Clarkey]

On 06/09/2021 at 17:27, Quetzalcoatl72 said:

but on NINA I have ASTAP set up as my plate solver which doesn't seem to work, I have the file locations correct, because it does run it but then fails and Astrometry boots up as the backup

I use ASTAP on NINA and it has been fine. Very occasionally it fails to solve, but it is rare and usually because I am trying to set up when it is not quite fully dark. Have you tried loading an image directly into ASTAP to see if it will solve?