[Imme (Jon)]

Freaking platesolving has been doing my head in. I mean there was a period there where I walked away from the observatory for 4 weeks just because I couldn’t get it working.
I was spending more time finding and centering targets than I was recording data.
Photos were up, directories were good, everything was linked, pixel size, sensor size, etc were all in but every time I tried to platesolve it would time out and I’d contemplate the bouncing ability of the computer.

.....until I sat back 20 minutes ago and looked at my 800mm focal length telescope. Yep 800mm, says it there right on the side.......but with the qhy8 camera attached to a coma corrector hanging off the side I needed to put a number of extensions on to reach focus.....almost 100mm.......so who’s the fool....me!!!!!!

800mm focal length PLUS my extensions.......I changed the 800mm to 900mm in the focal length settings box (in APT) and BOOM.....plate solves every image I throw at it in less than 10 seconds.

Why am I posting this you ask......hopefully the next poor sucker who struggles with plate solving like I have for months reads this and saves him or herself a great deal of frustration.

Moral of the story - focal length equals the length of your scope plus any extensions used.....not just the scope length (well it did for me).

Feeling stupid that it was such a simple thing that most of you probably know but as someone new to playesolving it isn’t something I read anywhere or was told through my research.

It’s a good day......