John,

I've been having problems plate solving again reliably with CCDAP 4. Here are my tentative observations:

Since my plate scale is .4 as/px, the gsc catalog almost never has enough stars to solve reliably. I downloaded the USNO A catalog, and that works somewhat better, but still is not totally reliable.

I noticed that if I use the USNO-B (net) catalog to solve the synchimage in Maxim directly, I sometimes can solve images that timeout in CCDAP. Sometimes the solve can take up to a minute, even when the field is almost dead on the target.

Questions/suggestions:

1. Could you make it so CCDAP could use the USNO-B catalog a la maxim?

2. Could you make the plate solve timeout time user selectable?

Thanks,

Pete

Hi Pete,

Since you didn't post a log file, from your post, it appears that you are using PinPoint for your plate solves. What version are you using? It is my understanding that what CCDAP4 does, is make the call to PinPoint and the parameters you have setup in PinPoint for plate solving, is what will be used. Have you tried adjusting any of the PinPoint parameters to see if that improves the plate solves ? Also it sounds like you may have a fairly small FOV, have you tried increasing the exposure time used for the plate solve image to see if any fainter stars can be picked up enough to be included in the solution?

Frank,

Yes, I am using Pinpoint. I think I have the latest version, but I'll check that. I do have a small FOV.

The issue here is that CCDAP does not solve an image that Maxim can. I think it has to do with the catalogs (usno a vs usno b) and the time limit. Sometimes the plate solve in Maxim takes several minutes. That's longer than the time limit allowed in CCDAP.

Pete

Frank,

My pinpoint version is 5.013

Hi John,

Have you tried changing the catalog that PinPoint uses on the Preferences page? I'm not a PinPoint user so I am not sure if that is what you are looking for or not.

John,

Please post a log file.

Also, look through your log and where you see a plate solve, zip the corresponding Sync_image file and send it to john (a) ccdware (dot) com

Thanks.

Hi Pete,
did this get resolved or do you still need some help.
I've never had a prob using the GSC with a small field for CCDAP/Maxim/PinPoint imaging. However I do bin the plate solve frames to 3x3, and adjust magnitude limits.
(my orig unbinned was 0.39asp so at 3x3 its more than adequate).

For astrometry reporting I use USNO-B for my real data frames for better precision and more stars when generating the asteroid data. Though I don't have the full catalog on my HD, so its downloaded live for each small field.
cheers,
...paul.