Issue With Plate Solving - Forums

Topic starter

3 hours ago

I have been sitting on some subs targeting NGC 2903 for a couple of months now, and have not been able to edit them properly due to issues with my Image Solver script in PixInsight. For some reason, the field isn’t registering correctly with the correct coordinates. Is there a deeper issue here with my Gaia database not loading properly? I sent my subs to a friend and they were able to go through the Image Solver script with no hiccups. Attached are some screenshots from my workflow.

Any advice or help is appreciated! I feel stuck looking at this same issue for over two months now.

📷 Process Console 1.png📷 Process Console 2.png

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Marcin Cikała

2 hours ago

Hello.

The PI platesolve script can be very choosy. You can solve image without any problems in ASTAP/PlateSolve2 or 3, but you'll encounter problems in PI.

First of all you should try playing around with the star detectioin parameters in the Advanced Parameters tab. Besides the relatively correct initial parameters in Image Parameters tab ( especially Image Scale and Pixel Size, the initial R.A. Dec) the advanced settings are crucial for star detection. And IMHO your situation likely points to this issue.

GAIA is just a catalog with the coordinates of nearby stars. It has no impact on star detection or the formation of pairs/triangles. You can choose any other star catalog and get the same results.

Try to play.

Regards, Marcin.

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pfile

1 hour ago

when this happens, usually the gaia database is misconfigured.

check this post:

https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/issues-with-spfc-and-spcc-in-pixinsight-1-9-2.24867/page-2#post-163802

Jure Menart

1 hour ago

Agree with pfile!

It happened to me just recently. Image solving was always working but I had huge issues with Leo Triplet. I also rejected the idea I had misconfigured Gaia as it was ‘always’ working.

In the end I noticed I had 2 versions of SP Gaia instead of non-SP version of DR3 :) since then it started to work again without problems.

Hope this solves your issues.

CS,

Jure

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PaoloMoroni

1 hour ago

If you feed the coordinates found with Astap to Pixinsight's Image solver, you will almost always get the right answer.

Regards, Paolo

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Ejo Schrama

43 minutes ago

Just feed the coordinates of the object manually and make sure that the focal length is correct, if that doesn’t help then something else is going on

Ivan Humeniuk

New contributor

9 minutes ago

PaoloMoroni · Apr 27, 2026, 03:35 PM
If you feed the coordinates found with Astap to Pixinsight's Image solver, you will almost always get the right answer.
Regards, Paolo

It never worked out that way for me. I even uploaded a photo to the Astrometry.net , it gave me all the parameters I needed, which I entered into the pix image solver, and it still couldn't do anything. I just gave up and started using the online star catalog TYCHO-2. Works like a charm.📷 image.png

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alpheratz06

3 minutes ago

Do the subs stack adequately?

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