Han,
thanks, I updated my version of ASTAP on the Rpi 4 and when I used your settings for minimum star size it did solve almost immediately. The exposure on that image was 60 seconds and i did have the camera cooler on, but it was not set very low; anyway the SBIG is getting on in age and noisy.
If the internal solver works really fast, then spending a little more time on the exposure (to help it work fast) is a good trade off. Especially when you are supposed to be on a target you cannot really see.
Source-Extractor is crashing on my Rpi because of Out-of-Memory, but usually after it has completed a process. I was running several in series trying different star size options and then solving. it eventually solved but then crashed. Did not seem to hurt anything. It could be a pain in Ekos.
Most of the time I spend at plate-solving in Ekos is during polar alignment, waiting for the online solver to load and eventually solve (it usually has). My exposure there are typically 10 seconds, I certainly could have a dark available, not sure that is a current option in Ekos. The images sometimes have overblown stars (like Polaris), but sufficient stars in the field to solve.
Here is an example:
Polaris _10sec_May13
Source-Extractor - default options - Extraction params(min area 5, sub pixel 5) star filtering as is: it finds all the stars but also some 'streak' noise in the camera.
fast solving - finds more noise than stars
small star option - finds ok stars, but misses 1/3
mid size option - finds much more noise than stars
and suprisingly big star options finds a lot of hot pixels as stars?
using the editor and selecting Min Area - 60 seems to be the best match here for eliminating the noise and just finding stars. using scale and not position it solves in 26 sec.
the syslog says it is kill the SexySolverTester process - either that or sacrifice the child process? Interesting that it closes down after a few seconds after it has completed the solve, and it indicates "no Processes running"
so why is it failing then?
Ron