PA: Plate solve always fails

Dayvu

Hi,

I have been trying to polar align with asiair for the second night. I always get plate solving errors.
My setup:
ASIAIR Mini
HEQ5 Pro
500mm F6.25 telescope
Sony A7iv
As I found out, I never had Polaris in the frame but Yildun I read here that Polaris is not a must have and plate solve should find out where it is.
I tried different exposures and isos but the result is always "Plate Solve failed", the only thing that changes is the number of stars. This varies from 1000 to 80 stars. I have also tried "New Plate Solve" in the settings.
Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? I'm a bit stumped.
Sample image I tried to plate solve on and the location in Stellarium where the frame is located is in the attachment.

jsmithsd

It looks like you don’t have the gain setting or exposure length high enough to get enough stars to successfully plate solve. I always take test exposures, tweak focus and manually try a plate solve before I start the PA routine with my ASIAIR. It always works if you can manually plate solve before you start. I roughly align the mount and get Polaris in the field before the PA routine and it works every time.

jsg

Try turning OFF the optional advanced plate solving switch in the section of ASIAIR Plus where it lets you choose All Star Polar Align. The switch below that is the one I am referring to. I was having plate solving issues with a 1422mm focal length scope and turned it off. Now ASIAIR Plus is plate solving every time I polar align without issue.

Dayvu

Hi I solved it by removing the 500mm focal length from the main scope settings. ASIAir auto detected the focal length and
now PA Plate Solve works perfectly.

iErickDGAF

how did you get the ASIAIR app to recognize your Sony A7IV. In my situation the app recognizes my camera, but wont recognize that its in BULB mode so It doesnt load an image. Mind sharing how youre making it work?

Dayvu

Bulb mode does not work, however you can set the camera and the asiair to a exposure that is 30sec and below.
This is a nasty workaround, but at least you can make 30sec sub exposures.
Keep in mind every time the asiair changes exposure the camera setting jumps to a wrong exposure and you have to adjust the camera exposure by hand.
For image centering asiair uses 2sec exposures.
I hope the asiair team pushes the update with a7iv support very soon.

iErickDGAF

Dayvu wow what a bummer, I havent tried it, but I will later today, but that sucks, the fact that we have to do that Nasty work around is terrible.