The other night I started having difficulty with the Astrometry.net integrated plate solver. Plate solve "capture and solve" commands would fail even before the image could be downloaded to the client.

I then brought up the control panel and the solver button was "disable". If I clicked "enable" the solver would try to solve the image. If it failed, the solver button switched back to "disabled"

Can anyone explain to me (or point me to documentation) what the solver enable/disable button is doing?

Thank you.

Probably no one is updating older KStars versions, but just in case...

Updating Ekos "broke" my astrometry work flow: the alignment module in Ekos defaults to "Stellarsolver" -- see radio buttons at the bottom of the page. Since my Ekos is running on a separate computer than the computer at the telescope, it is necessary to select the "remote" radio button if access is by indiserver, or to run Ekos on the telescope computer and access a remote desktop by VNC.