I also had trouble with sky survey images when I did my first tests, and did not really figure out why. I also tried
solving them in ASTAP directly so confirmed it was not a APPM issue, or NINA; I also tried TSX's image link and
had them fail. Only astronometry.net would work.

TSX and PinPoint should solve the images provided you have the image scale set correctly. Also, TSX requires some additional setup that is described in the APPM help's section.

I get fast solutions with SkyX, although I do have the TheSky Pro Database add-on.

ASTAP usually requires tinkering of the settings to get it to work consistently.

-Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: main@ap-gto.groups.io [mailto:main@ap-gto.groups.io] On Behalf Of ap@CaptivePhotons.com
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2021 4:55 AM
To: main@ap-gto.groups.io
Subject: Re: [ap-gto] Pier crash while #APPM paused -

Ray said:

If it's ASTAP, it's likely the plate-solver settings. I found that although ASTAP was the fastest of the plate-solvers,

it often failed to solve if its settings are not set correctly. Particularly, increasing the "Max Number of Stars" would
sometimes help. If you can't get ASTAP to solve, try posting the images to the ASTAP forum so the author can
research the issue.

Especially if you had it loaded for a while, it is also important to check you have a database that matches the image
scale. See

https://www.hnsky.org/astap.htm

H17 doesn't work well at very small field of views. If I recall you have to both install and switch to it if another was in
use, two steps.

I also had trouble with sky survey images when I did my first tests, and did not really figure out why. I also tried
solving them in ASTAP directly so confirmed it was not a APPM issue, or NINA; I also tried TSX's image link and
had them fail. Only astronometry.net would work.

It seemed odd that sky survey images would not solve, but as soon as I used real images taken myself, it all worked
great and fast.

I wonder if it is because sky surveys are mosaics and when you pick an arbitrary point the simulated image is
including pieces of several images, and their blending is not perfect (or more precisely whatever they do to blend is
not the equivalent distortion of a single image at that point). That's speculation.

It all worked great when I stopped simulating.

Linwood