Astro Tortilla Error on install... and other problems.

[Astroman]

Hi Guys,

I am just getting used to the GUI and workings of Astro Tortilla, going through CN and other pages to find out why I cannot solve any images. I can go into nova.astrometry.net and solve them no worries, but Astro Tortilla isn't doing it... I could post a heap of log files, but not sure anyone wants to go through them.. I did however on install have an error pop up and wondered if anyone had encountered a similar problem that could possibly stop it from solving?

[lazjen]

I suspect your cygwin portion of astrotortilla did not install correctly. Under the astrotortilla menu entry, there's a cygwin setup option. Not sure if it will help, but it might be worth exploring.

[Astroman]

thanks Chris, I tried that but it didn't change anything. Was worth a shot.. I also changed the files to jpg and it's working now. was using tifs before, maybe it couldn't read the tif files.

[lazjen]

I think that's right - I'm fairly certain I use jpgs.

[Astroman]

I will try on a few other jpegs I have and see if it solves them also.

[Astroman]

I now have Backyard EOS Premium edition so it will be interesting to see how they communicate together, so far so good, the camera and Astro Tortilla are working together, just need to see if it will plate solve.

[lazjen]

I can tell you from experience it works well. Depending on the speed of your camera link, etc, you may need to increase the timeout as astrotortilla counts the timeout from when it sends the request to BYEOS. I think I used 10 s.

[Astroman]

I tested it with the camera sitting next to me and it downloads the image ok. but true test looks like it will be later tonight.

[Astroman]

good news is I was able to solve all the places I went to tonight (only 19 due to cloud) Only problem I have now is the objects were not centering as much as I would like they were all off center a bit. it didn't matter what I did I always had a small error... it was though AT wasn't centering properly.. not sure whats going on there, will recheck when I am not so tired and there are fewer clouds about. BUT! so far I am very impressed with it, once I learn to drive it a little better I am sure it will come to me. FOV is 2.75deg x 1.8deg

[lazjen]

In AT do you tick the boxes to get it to sync the scope and redo to within a certain margin (1' I think is default)? If you do, you'll notice over time that it gets more accurate on the initial slew.

[Astroman]

Yep I did that, but after 19 solves, I thought it would have been a great deal closer than that. Will try changing from JNOW to J2000 and see if that makes a difference, it seems most of my programs are running in J2000, there maybe some slight differences between the Planetarium and the solved image. Will give it a go and see how it goes, doesn't hurt trying... only thing lastnight I did was accidentally hit park scope on EQMOD while I was solving an image :D oops...

[lazjen]

I'm not sure if it means anything, but I use J2000. I seem to recall using some bit of software in the system that did not support JNOW, but could use J2000, so I made sure everything matched.

[Astroman]

Hi Chris, I just checked my Planetarium program and there is a setting on there which send J2000 coordinates, I have changed AT to reflect this and hopefully the clouds will part long enough to do a couple of plate solves at least. If it isn't that then I am out of ideas for now, but one step at a time.

[Astroman]

Good news is, changing from JNOW to J2000 fixed the problem of the object not being centred. All working as it should be now. Still got to polar align better may try use AT polar alignment feature with that.

[Astroman]

Okay another test lastnight before clouds rolled in and the battery on my Camera died. I changed the JNOW to J2000 and I got the objects perfectly (or near) the centre, it also solved 100% of the points I went to. So I took a few plate solves from various parts of the sky, until I hit Rigel, then every time it did the second plate solve to check it's position, it stalled and the only way out was the run task manager and shut down the program. After loading the program up again, I re-did the solve and again on the second solve, it hung AT. Not sure whats going on there. Clouds rolled in so my observing run was cut short, will try and replicate the problem another time.