It's not much to go on, but iI pulled this out of the logs for last night:

[2020-12-07T22:16:35.752 CST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - Starting Polar Alignment Assistant process...
[2020-12-07T22:16:35.753 CST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Clearing mount Alignment Model..."
[2020-12-07T22:16:35.755 CST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Changing filter to Empty..."
[2020-12-07T22:16:37.952 CST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Capturing image..."
[2020-12-07T22:16:41.238 CST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Image received."
[2020-12-07T22:16:45.690 CST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Solver Failed"
[2020-12-07T22:16:47.089 CST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - Stopping Polar Alignment Assistant process...
[2020-12-07T22:16:47.179 CST INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Parking the mount..."


Thanks for your help on this

Did you install the index files?

I've always had the index files installed, both astap and astrometry. I'm going to delete the entire install and try one more time before I give up.

Please turn on Alignment logging so that we can know what is going on with the solver.



When you do this and click capture and solve, a lot of info will print about what is going on. You can increase or decrease this amount of information as appropriate or save it to a separate file.

And please open the Alignment options to verify that the solver knows where to find your index files. They should be checked in green if they are found.

I MAY have found something. In verifying I had the settings you pointed out (which all is well there) I noticed the index files were owned by root, and not by me. I just changed ownership of all the index files to me, we'll see if the issue goes away tonight. Hopefully it was just a rights issue. I'll update tonight.

Can you test with Simulators inside to solve any problems before going outside?

So I was poking around the internet and found an article how to test astrometry.net to test plate solving. I downloaded their test image and manually ran the solver and it solved just fine. I feel pretty good about it for tonight. I'll post an update later.

Note that there are multiple options for solving now in 3.5.0, one is to use an internal solver that I spent the last 10 months developing that hopefully will end up being easier to configure and use as well as more compatible with various systems. Another is to use your local copy of astrometry.net which is the thing you just tested. Another is to use ASTAP.

You can select between these different methods as shown:



But please remember to enable Alignment logging so that you can see the output of the solver because you can't begin to try to solve an issue until you have some idea of what that issue might be.

the solver wasnt working because the file ownership was set to root instead of me. Once I changed the ownership back to me, the solver started working.

good to know, was it the index files, the folder, or both?

Sorry byt I was unable to solve nothing using Shoot and Goto ì. I tried all th options, I am going back to the 3.4.3

[2020-12-13T23:48:02.293 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.fits] - Loading file "/home/pi/CONDIVISA/test_vari/M_42/Light/Luminanza/L_M42_60_secs_2020-12-07T00-58-12_003.fits"
[2020-12-13T23:48:03.503 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Automatically downsampling the image by 3"
[2020-12-13T23:48:03.666 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Evaluating Installed RAM for inParallel Option. Total Size of Index files: 1.18568 GB, Installed RAM: 3.56449 GB, Free RAM: 0.924511 GB"
[2020-12-13T23:48:03.669 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Not enough RAM is available on this system for loading the index files you have in parallel"
[2020-12-13T23:48:03.671 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Disabling the inParallel option."
[2020-12-13T23:48:03.691 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++"
[2020-12-13T23:48:03.693 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Starting Internal StellarSolver Sextractor with the 1-Default profile . . ."
[2020-12-13T23:48:04.620 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Stars Found before Filtering: 290"
[2020-12-13T23:48:04.622 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Stars Found after Filtering: 290"
[2020-12-13T23:48:04.625 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++"
[2020-12-13T23:48:04.628 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Configuring StellarSolver"
[2020-12-13T23:48:04.798 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Scale range: 5.94144 to 8.91216 arcsec/pixel"
[2020-12-13T23:48:04.801 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Downsampling is multiplying the pixel scale by: 3"
[2020-12-13T23:48:04.803 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++"
[2020-12-13T23:48:04.811 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Starting Internal StellarSolver Astrometry.net based Engine with the 1-Default profile. . ."
[2020-12-13T23:48:16.096 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Solver was aborted, timed out, or failed, so no solution was found"
[2020-12-13T23:48:16.098 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.align] - "Solver Failed"

How is possible that the system was unable to solve a stupid image of M42 or M27???

we.tl/t-PC64GJzQP7