SUMMARY Polar Alignment and Plate Solving Work Initially, then fail STEPS TO REPRODUCE 1. Run in Simulator mode 2. Try to run Polar Alignment or Plate-Solving 3. Tested using Online & Offline Solver OBSERVED RESULT Error message : Python 3 and Astropy not installed. EXPECTED RESULT PA and Plate solving work as expected - no error message SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS macOS: 10.14.6 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION When running'Options .../Astronomy.net/Setup':- - Homebrew installed - Python3 installed - Astropy will install when you click Ok But when I press OK I get the message 'Astropy install failure'. I have run the manual installer using Terminal : pip3 install astropy That seemed to work. PA seemed to work OK (on the simulator) the first time. Subsequent attempts did not work. I reinstalled OSX (for other reasons) and tried again. PA and plate solving worked OK - but only the FIRST TIE. Subsequent attempts failed. Attempting to re-install Astropy using 'pip3 install astropy' gives this message :- Requirement already satisfied: astropy in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/lib/python3.8/site-packages (4.0.1.post1) Requirement already satisfied: numpy>=1.16 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from astropy) (1.19.1) Restarting KStars then trying to do a PA online, KStars seems to TRY to connect to astronomy.net to solve the first image :- "Upload complete. Waiting for astrometry.net solver to complete..." But it never completes - spinning wheel adjacent to "Stop" button just keeps spinning. After several minutes, the responder says 'Solver timed out', but the icon next to the 'Stop' button keeps spinning and KStars appears to keep waiting. If I stop the process and try again offline, I get this message :- "Astrometry.net uses python3 and the astropy package for plate solving images offline. These were not detected on your system." Same if I try again using Online. So there appears to be an issue with the way KStars accesses the resources needed to run Solver. Gary
No need to use Python in the latest KStars release, you can configure Align settings to use sextractor instead.
Created attachment 131502 [details] attachment-2499-0.html Hi Jasem Many thanks for your speedy reply. OK - I tried Sextractor - it worked ... 1. OFFline 2. ONline Interestingly … Python worked the first time I attempted a plate-solve after booting up, but failed on the second attempt. So - a couple of questions :- 1. Why does Python work sometimes, but not others - do I have issues with my installation ? 2. What is the difference between using Python vs Sextractor ? Ive spent a lot of time researching but cant find anything that explains this. They each seem to interface to Astro.net <http://astro.net/> / ASTAP, or use offline data ? Ekos does a nice job of image capture … Do you have plans for Ekos to do image stacking as well ? Best regards, Gary ===== > On 08 Sep 2020, at 21:37, Jasem Mutlaq <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote: > > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=426296 > > --- Comment #1 from Jasem Mutlaq <mutlaqja@ikarustech.com> --- > No need to use Python in the latest KStars release, you can configure Align > settings to use sextractor instead. > > -- > You are receiving this mail because: > You reported the bug.
We are in the process of removing them actually. There would be no python in the next KStars release hopefully if all goes well. So you don't have to worry about sextractor/python again.
Thanks Jasem, Ok - so 3 questions for you :- 1. When do you expect the next release of Ekos ? 2. Is there a way to run Ekos without using KStars ? I use a different planetarium pp - but prefer Ekos for scope control and image capture 3. Do you have plans for Ekos to do image stacking as well ? Gary ===== > On 10 Sep 2020, at 07:37, Jasem Mutlaq <bugzilla_noreply@kde.org> wrote: > > https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=426296 > > --- Comment #3 from Jasem Mutlaq <mutlaqja@ikarustech.com> --- > We are in the process of removing them actually. There would be no python in > the next KStars release hopefully if all goes well. So you don't have to worry > about sextractor/python again. > > -- > You are receiving this mail because: > You reported the bug.
We will not use Astropy in next release, so this is marked as unmaintained.