Plate solving advice wanted

[Gastraea]

Hi All :help:
New to AP, I have a skyguider pro and have been using plate solving to find targets.
I had fantastic success with this technique to find and image M83 but last night when trying to find the lagoon nebula things went sour.

Initially I was using 'All sky plate solver'
The equipment is GT81 with x0.8 flattener and D5300
The correct settings for this is 383mm focal length and 3.83um pixel size

Both of these images were captured with the same set up (different nights). One image solves and the other does not.

So does anyone have any advice. Are large saturated stars throwing things off? shorter exposure?

Somewhere near lagoon
https://photos.app.goo.gl/5Jy2wUMeFQ6YPDvc9

M83
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Dn92v2xeXiNJLd2e8

[mswhin63]

When I use plate solving from my Canon 350D I image only for about 10 to 20 seconds and that is enough for me. I usually get issues after 30 to 40 seconds.
The other thing I noticed is 383mm FL include the 0.8 x flattener?

[The_bluester]

I found All Sky Plate Solver to be quite finicky sometimes. Funny enough I can recall having issues in that general area of the sky. I use ASTAP instead now.


I use Voyager for image capture, with Plate Solve 2 for referenced solves (Where it starts from the reported position of the telescope and spirals out) and ASTAP for blind solves (Where you just give it a picture of the sky with no position reference and let it run)

[Gastraea]

Thanks for the suggestions guys

[Wilsil]

Which program are you using for plate solving?
Are you focused?

[AdamJL]

ASTAP is excellent, but also requires good focus.

That said, a couple of weeks ago I too had a similar experience with ASTAP in that one area of sky (Dragons of Ara) platesolved fine but when I switched over to the Helix, I could only platesolve 50% of the time and only if I binned my images 2x2.

It turned out that even though I had the right ASTAP database installed, ASTAP wasn't pointing to it.

Click the Epsilon button then the Alignment tab. Ensure the star database is H18. This one allows for higher magnitude stars.
Obviously you'll have to download and install H18 first. When you do, ASTAP doesn't automatically switch over to it, so you'll need to do that manually.

[Gastraea]

Thanks guys I got ASTAP to work on the images.

[Merlin66]

I’ve tried many plate solving software…
My software for image acquisition is Astroart which also has a great plate solving routine. Works well for me.