Plate solving inconsistency - STILL

[William Bristow]

Hi Christian.

The log shows that FocusMax was unable to complete an autofocus run successfully during the entire session and the only difference I can see in the posted images is a softening of focus between the solved image and the unsolved image.

In the absence of anything else obvious, or that Bob can spot, try making a couple of small changes to FocusMax Preferences to try and get it to plate solve successfully and complete an autofocus run when AcquireStar is being used.

FocusMax Preferences > AcquireStar > Plate Solve tab:

You are currently using Bin 1x1 when FocusMax plate solves after selecting a focus star and that is when FocusMax is failing as it can't plate solve after slewing to find the focus star.
Change the binning for plate solving in FocusMax Plate Solve tab to Bin 4x4 and check that the X/Y pixel scale is set to the un-binned image scale of your system (0.28 arc/sec-pixel I think?).

I assume from the pixel count that this Moravian is a CMOS camera in which case binning won't improve sensitivity but it will reduce the number of warm pixel clusters detected as false stars and reduce the time taken to plate solve.

The log shows that AcquireStar plate solving is using the central 90% region of the sensor, in FocusMax V5 that is configurable on the Plate Solve Tab but I can't find a copy anywhere of the FocusMax V4 guide that shows the PlateSolve tab and I don't know if that option is configurable or not in V4.

Check the AcquireStar Plate Solve tab in FocusMax V4 and if the option is there to configure the size of the CCD central region then change it from 90% to 75% to reduce the plate solve field size slightly and reduce the number of stars detected to give PinPoint less work to do and get a better star match away from any field distortion at the edges of the sensor.

Once you have FocusMax AcquireStar successfully plate solving and completing an autofocus run every time it is called, and the images are sharply focused, then you can turn to look at any Plate Solve errors under ACP. Right now I suspect the two failures are somehow linked with the FocusMax AcquireStar autofocus failure leading on sometime later to ACP Plate Solve issues as the focus softens later into the session.

Hopefully Bob will be along soon with something better than I can find....

William.