Also be sure the gain is turned up high enough if you're trying to plate solve in the simulator. Mine consistently failed under 50. Was driving myself crazy trying to figure this out. Higher gain = more stars = easier solves.

Now that this works, holy guacamole, somebody give Rob Lancaster a medal. I don't know if jubilant cursing is allowed on this forum but mother@$#&er this thing is %*#$ing brilliant.

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Posting here in case other noobs like me have the same problem I did...

I couldn't get plate solving to work for the life of me. Tried every combination of solvers, online and offline, ultimately uninstalled everything (including the copies of python 3.9, astrometry, etc. that I had installed myself), reinstalled Kstars and tried again in the simulator with no luck... UNTIL I pointed the sim at a spot with a ton of stars. In that case the internal solver was blazingly fast, just incredible. But then I slewed the sim to a less star rich region and again, consistent failure.

Then I noticed you can *change the gain of the simulated camera in the solver window.* Once I increased the gain to 60, my captures yielded more and brighter stars, and the solver did its thing brilliantly.

So, to nobody in particular: be sure your gain is turned up enough to give the solver data to work with!

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