Are there current instructions anywhere that can help me configure Ekos to solve internally using sextractor and astrometry.net?

Should I be installing sextractor? If so, I'm getting the following error:

Sextractor Error:
If I try to install sextractor through homebrew with "brew install sextractor", but that returns the follow error:

curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: certificate has expired
More details here: curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html

curl failed to verify the legitimacy of the server and therefore could not
establish a secure connection to it. To learn more about this situation and
how to fix it, please visit the web page mentioned above.
Error: Failed to download resource "sextractor"
Download failed: www.astromatic.net/download/sextractor/sextractor-2.19.5.tar.gz

Sextractor comes shipped with the latest KStars for Mac.

$> /Applications/KStars.app/Contents/MacOS/astrometry/bin/sex --help

> SYNTAX: sex <image> [<image2>][-c <configuration_file>][-<keyword> <value>]
> to dump a default configuration file: sex -d
> to dump a default extended configuration file: sex -dd
> to dump a full list of measurement parameters: sex -dp

Is that also true for the Rpi? Do I just do and update on Kstars . I already have SexySolver loaded on the Rpi, I just need to EKOS link to in the align routine.

thanks,
Ron

Sextractor (or source-extractor since Ubuntu 20.04) should be a dependency of either kstars-bleeding or indi-full so it should automatically be installed on RPi, yes. Unless you build from source which I assume you do not.

Are there any instructions for setting up the offline plate solving using sextractor and astrometry.net on macOS that are current. Everything I've found is at least a few years old, with steps that no longer work in Catalina. As James Brown would lament;

Please! Please! Please!

Please, someone help me!

These settings work for me. Note that I uncommented inparallel in the third screenshot and I am not sure if that's necessary. The astrometry.net index files can be downloaded from data.astrometry.net/. Note that you'll only need the 4100 files and 4200 files, not the 5000 files.

OK, so I guess I do have sextractor installed. My settings match these exactly, and I am solving using Astro.net set to online. I'd like to get it working offline though, which seems to be incredibly faster. When I change it to offline it runs the set exposure and attempt to start astrometry.net to solve it. It reports that it can confirm astrometry.net version 0.73 is installed, but then errors out with unable to start server.

Is this a known error that can be solved with the info I've provided, or do you need me to capture more info for you? If so, can you let me know exactly what you need from me?

Thank you so much to anyone who will work with me to try to help me get this figured out!

OK, I have a log file of the error I'm getting when trying to solve offline.

And I was wrong earlier on the version of Astrometry.net it detected. it's actually 0.76.

Detected Astrometry.net version 0.76

I am not really sure what goes wrong but I did notice something in your logs. Have a look at my second screen shot. I have "Use Scale" disabled because I found that that works better for me and solving could fail when enabled. I never really understood why but perhaps it works for you too?

wvreeven, thanks for the suggestion, but I tried it and unfortunately it didn't help.

Also, just a side note, because I was told to do this for something else and it worked, every time I make a change I save it, close out of Kstars/Ekos and restart it to test.

I've attached the latest error log, which is basically the same as the first.

Another question I have is about the version of sextractor I have. It looks like the latest version available is 2.19.5, but I only have version 0.76. Is this a problem? I've tried to use homebrew to install the latest version, but it comes back with a curl error about the site hosting the install file has an expired ssl cert, so it won't proceed. And I am not proficient enough in homebrew or curl to figure out a way around it. What version of sextractor is everyone else running?

% brew install sextractor
==> Downloading www.astromatic.net/download/sextractor/sextractor-2.19.5
##O#- #
curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: certificate has expired
More details here: curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html

curl failed to verify the legitimacy of the server and therefore could not
establish a secure connection to it. To learn more about this situation and
how to fix it, please visit the web page mentioned above.
Error: Failed to download resource "sextractor"
Download failed: www.astromatic.net/download/sextractor/sextractor-2.19.5.tar.gz

Thanks for the help!

The version reported is of astrometry.net, not of sextractor. And you really do not need the brew version. Sorry, I am out of ideas. I hope that forum member Rob Lancaster will be able to help you.

I’ve read that error so many times, I cannot believe I was confusing the two! Sorry about that. Thanks for your help so far. Will Rob see this thread, or am I supposed to reach out to him?

Thanks again!