Sky Safari Pro 7 iOS / Starsense explorer problem

[Bloodline]

As sky safari was on offer the other week together with the fact it now includes the Celestron Starsense Explorer functionality I decided to buy it as it contains a lot more information and functionality than the standard Starsense Explorer app. However I’ve come across a couple of problems that may be bugs or just me not doing something right.

I’ve setup my scope within the app and entered the Celestron code to enable it and when I first use it it works exactly the same as the Starsense app , the arrows show which way to push the scope, the screen zooms in as you get closer to the target and the targeting circle turns green when you on target. However after a few targets the targeting circle disappears and it no longer zooms in and all I’m left with is the arrows and a small blue targeting circle that doesn’t change colour. The only way I can get it working properly is to restart the app but again after a short while the targeting circle disappear.

The other problem is the actual plate solving, even though it’s using the same technology as the Starsense app it doesn’t seem to be as good. Quite a few times it couldn’t locate where it was looking at and kept asking for the scope to be moved to a clear part of the sky, the it would work ok for a while. I kept switching between safari and the Starsense app to compare and the Starsense app would locate 100% of the time where as safari would only work 50 % of the time.

In the end I went back to the Starsense app as Safari was almost unusable.

Has anyone else used the Starsense function in Sky Safari and had any issues?
 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[tomato]

I also purchased Sky Safari to use with the StarSense unit. I have successfully installed it but have yet to use it in anger on my 16” Dobsonian due to the dire UK weather. I’ll post my findings as soon as I get it out under the stars.

[Stu]

@Bloodline yes, I was having similar problems a little while back. I assumed it was something I was doing wrong, but what I was seeing matches your experience. I’ll have another go if ever the clouds clear. Might be worth dropping a post onto the SkySafari forum to see what they say.

[Bloodline]

8 minutes ago, Stu said:

@Bloodline yes, I was having similar problems a little while back. I assumed it was something I was doing wrong, but what I was seeing matches your experience. I’ll have another go if ever the clouds clear. Might be worth dropping a post onto the SkySafari forum to see what they say.

Its reassuring that it’s not just me, I was beginning to think I’d done something in the settings and that’s what was causing it.

If the weather forecast is correct for East Kent tomorrow I might get a chance to test it again.

I did have a look in the SkySafari forums but there’s nothing I could find relating to the Starsense function, so maybe I’ll have to do a post like you’ve suggested.

 

[RobertI]

I have also been experiencing the same problems. The issue of sometimes not being able to platesolve seems to happen on both SS and the Starsense App for me (ie: switching from SS to the Starsense App did not seem to solve the problem). It also happened at a dark site recently and also in an area of sky with lots of stars, so it is puzzling.

The not zooming in issue seemed to be just restricted to SS.

I am using an iPhone 12. I’ll do some more testing, but it’s disappointing as my first few times out were flawless. 😕 

I did have a major problem a while back where it would not platesolve at all, but then I realised I still had Sky Safari set to Turkey time  (my holiday destination), and changing it to BST solved the issue. So I am wondering if the problem might be due to a system setting somewhere……

Edited October 22, 2023 by RobertI

[Bloodline]

A member of the Celestron Starsense explorer group on facebook suggested I try this: 

‘The problem with the targeting circle disappearing happened to me too and I found that if one of the existing scope display or Telrad display settings is active it can interfere. Make sure all scope display field of view options are turned off. 

Also, if multiple devices are being used with SkySafari, the scope display Settings interfere with each other due to cloud backup syncing. If that's happening, put the device running SkySafari in airplane mode during your observing session and it won't automatically sync the scope display Settings to any other device.’

Well I tried it last night and had no problems at all so hopefully it may work for other people as well.

[RobertI]

4 hours ago, Bloodline said:

A member of the Celestron Starsense explorer group on facebook suggested I try this: 

‘The problem with the targeting circle disappearing happened to me too and I found that if one of the existing scope display or Telrad display settings is active it can interfere. Make sure all scope display field of view options are turned off. 

Also, if multiple devices are being used with SkySafari, the scope display Settings interfere with each other due to cloud backup syncing. If that's happening, put the device running SkySafari in airplane mode during your observing session and it won't automatically sync the scope display Settings to any other device.’

Well I tried it last night and had no problems at all so hopefully it may work for other people as well.

That sounds very promising, could solve both problems, thanks so much for investigating. I will try and let you know. 👍

[RobertI]

Conditions weren’t great tonight, low bright moon and very wispy high cloud, but I tried the above mentioned potential fixes for SkySafari  (switching to flight mode and turning off the scope display FOV circles). Unfortunately I got the same problems, the zooming in feature worked initially but then stopped, and there were areas of sky where it could not detect enough stars. The latter issue was not surprising given the conditions, but what was surprising was that when I switched to the Starsense app, it detected the stars perfectly! I compared on three specific objects in different areas of the sky where SkySafari could not detect stars, and the Starsense app consistently found enough stars to platesolve. 

So bad news that the SkySafari problem not solved, but good news that the Starsense app seems to work well even under challenging conditions. It’s no great hardship to stick with the Starsense app, it’s pretty amazing in its own right! 

[tomato]

Thanks for the update and good to hear that the StarSense app is pretty robust.

But disappointing about SkySafari, it is a nice app but I purchased it specifically on the back of the StarSense functionality.

[RobertI]

55 minutes ago, tomato said:

Thanks for the update and good to hear that the StarSense app is pretty robust.

But disappointing about SkySafari, it is a nice app but I purchased it specifically on the back of the StarSense functionality.

Yes it is disappointing, although the fixes seemed to work for @Bloodline. I’ll do more testing and fiddling with settings to see what I can find out. There are a lot more settings in SkySafari (eg: you can adjust date and time which you can’t do Starsense app, and I know this can affect star detection). 

[Bloodline]

12 hours ago, RobertI said:

Conditions weren’t great tonight, low bright moon and very wispy high cloud, but I tried the above mentioned potential fixes for SkySafari  (switching to flight mode and turning off the scope display FOV circles). Unfortunately I got the same problems, the zooming in feature worked initially but then stopped, and there were areas of sky where it could not detect enough stars. The latter issue was not surprising given the conditions, but what was surprising was that when I switched to the Starsense app, it detected the stars perfectly! I compared on three specific objects in different areas of the sky where SkySafari could not detect stars, and the Starsense app consistently found enough stars to platesolve. 

So bad news that the SkySafari problem not solved, but good news that the Starsense app seems to work well even under challenging conditions. It’s no great hardship to stick with the Starsense app, it’s pretty amazing in its own right! 

I’m sorry the fix didn’t seem to work for you, maybe I was just lucky. I’ve not had chance to try it again as the weathers not been good, if I get chance to try again I’ll let you know how I got on.