Vizier down, AstroBin currently cannot solve with PixInsight AstroBin Platform open discussions community forum · Salvatore Iovene · ... · 20 · 226 · 4

siovene
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Hi folks,

http://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/ is currently down, which means that PixInsight cannot solve.

Screenshot 2025-02-23 at 22.41.33.jpg

I'll make sure pending AstroBin images solve automatically without you needing to do anything once Vizier is up again, which I hope is tomorrow (!)

Thanks for your patience!
Salvatore
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frankz 4.07
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Hi Salvatore,
It would seem Vizier at Strasbourg is up again (at least it works when I use it annotate an image in my Local PI), but advanced plate-solving on AB still fails. Do you see the same?
Thanks,
Francesco
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siovene
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No, it’s just your image in afraid. Have you tried adding a FITS file in the advanced plate solving settings?
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frankz 4.07
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Thanks, let me try that.
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frankz 4.07
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No, looks like it still fails even after uploading a XISF file. It happens for two images:

https://app.astrobin.com/u/frankz?i=cm7351
https://app.astrobin.com/u/frankz?i=j6gvmr

The strange thing is that, for the second image, which is older, advanced plate solving used to work fine for previous revisions.
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frankz 4.07
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One commonality between the two images is that, in both cases, the latest and final revisions have different pixel size than the previous revisions. Do you think this could be a cause for failure?
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siovene
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No, AstroBin uses the relevant revision data to plate-solving revisions. I can try to isolate this to see the exact logs.
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frankz 4.07
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Thanks, that’d be great. Whatever the problem is, it seems limited to those two images: I tried to re-start the advanced plate solving for other images, and it worked.
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siovene
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@Francesco Meschia  (and mentioning @Joachim Stingl who is having the same problem),

I don't really know what to do with this one, seems like PixInsight just doesn't like these particular images of yours (log will follow at the end of the message).

The only card I can try playing, which I can do this week, is sending a higher resolution version to PixInsight, in case subsampling makes it more likely to fail this way.

I'll keep you posted!

(Unfortunately I couldn't copy/paste from the remote session, so here's two screenshots of relevant parts of the log)

Screenshot 2025-02-25 at 00.16.42.jpg

Screenshot 2025-02-25 at 00.16.22.jpg
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frankz 4.07
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Very interesting Salvatore – thank you!
A question for you: PI not being a blind solver, I assume the Solver script is “seeded” with the coordinates and the image scale determined by the Astrometry.net blind solver? Is there a way to double-check the values being used for those images that fail?
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frankz 4.07
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One more bit of strangeness: I have in my staging area a very old image of the Leo Triplet, which had a correct PI plate solution and advanced annotation. I tried to restart the advanced plate solving, and it failed just like in my more recent images. And they all happen to be in the same area of the sky. 

I tried to do the same for two other images in my staging area, in different parts of the sky (M106, the Cygnus Veil): it worked in both cases.

It would be very strange, but could it be something related to sky coverage of the catalog used by PI? Maybe some part of it got corrupted?
What part of the sky is your image that fails solving, @Joachim Stingl?
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frankz 4.07
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Another data point: I just uploaded a new image of NGC 3628. It also fails to advance-solve.
It does seem something related to this particular corner of the sky…
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siovene
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Francesco Meschia:
Another data point: I just uploaded a new image of NGC 3628. It also fails to advance-solve.
It does seem something related to this particular corner of the sky...

It's possible. If we search for recent NGC 3628 with a small field radius (so it's only that galaxy and not the whole triplet), we can see that none of the recent one have PixInsight solutions.

The most recent one to have a solution is this one from last June:
https://app.astrobin.com/i/nwtagk

And I received a new version of PixInsight to run on AstroBin in July! This version came with changes to the plate-solving algorithm, because of of the items in the changelog said:

- Astrometric solutions are orders of magnitude more robust and accurate. We are now capable of modeling much wider fields and much more complex arbitrary distortions. The failure rate will be considerably reduced, and the generated data will be much more accurate and better adapted to the geometry of each solved image in AstroBin's web interface.

So I believe something might have broken a very specific cases.
Francesco Meschia:
I assume the Solver script is “seeded” with the coordinates and the image scale determined by the Astrometry.net blind solver? Is there a way to double-check the values being used for those images that fail?

This is correct, and yes, this is the information that AstroBin sends PixInsight:
serialNumber=4CYV6C8ZYAWZHBTRTNA4FWXYZL70PQWZ
taskType=ASTROBIN_SVG_OVERLAY
taskParams=
imageURL=https://cdn.astrobin.com/thumbs/8Rs3-bAc0hKx_1824x0_esdlMP5Y.png
centerRA=170.072000
centerDec=13.588000
largeSize=1824
smallSizeRatio=0.339912
imageResolution=0.853947
fontsBaseURL=/media/static/astrobin/fonts
liveLogURL=https://www.astrobin.com/platesolving/pixinsight/live-log-webhook/
observationTime=2022-01-29T00:00:00Z
obsLatitude=*REDACTED FOR PRIVACY CONCERNS*
obsLongitude=*REDACTED FOR PRIVACY CONCERNS*
obsHeight=*REDACTED FOR PRIVACY CONCERNS*
smallSizeTextRatio=0.900000
textScale=0.900000
layers=Grid|Ecliptic|Galactic Equator|Constellation Borders|Constellation Lines|NamedStars|Messier|NGC-IC|VdB|Sharpless|Barnard|LBN|LDN|PGC|CGPN
layerMagnitudeLimits=||||||||||||||
requestUser=AstroBin
requestUTC=2025-02-2507:15:46.807891
callbackURL=https://www.astrobin.com/platesolving/pixinsight/webhook/

Please note that `imageResolution`, which is the pixel scale, is not your native resolution but it's scaled up because PixInsight receives a scaled down version of your image.

Your NGC 3628 is 2400 pixels wide and has a pixel scale of 0.65"/px, which, when scaled to 1824 pixels wide becomes 0.85"/px.

I will now try with sending the entire image and see what happens (the concern is with memory usage of very large image and what happens to rendering the annotations).
Edited ...
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siovene
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Salvatore Iovene:
I will now try with sending the entire image and see what happens (the concern is with memory usage of very large image and what happens to rendering the annotations).

Unfortunately it fails the very same way. @Francesco Meschia, have you checked if your local version of PixInsight can solve your NGC 3628?
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frankz 4.07
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Yes it solved with no issues. This is really weird.
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siovene
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Can you see if this solves:

https://cdn.astrobin.com/thumbs/8Rs3-bAc0hKx_1824x0_esdlMP5Y.png

by seeding this information:

RA = 170.072000
Dec = 13.588000
Pixel scale = 0.853947

?
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frankz 4.07
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I just ran it, it solved just fine:

image.png
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siovene
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Then we reached the end of what I can do. We need to reach out to Juan Conejero to see if he can help. Btw what version of PI is that?
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frankz 4.07
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Thanks for trying, this is really a good mystery.
Good point about the versions. PI is 1.9.2 build 1633, and the version of ImageSolver is 6.3.1. Running on macOS.

Oh by the way: I don’t know if you can see it in the logs, but yesterday (or the day before yesterday depending on the time zone) I did get an advanced plate solution for a revision of this image: https://www.astrobin.com/j6gvmr/K/. Unfortunately I didn’t keep it because of issues with the content of the image itself, but it did solve...
Edited ...
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Earandir 0.00
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Francesco Meschia:
It would be very strange, but could it be something related to sky coverage of the catalog used by PI? Maybe some part of it got corrupted?
What part of the sky is your image that fails solving, @Joachim Stingl?

Hi Francesco, the particular image I´m trying plate-solving is roughly around the Virgo constellation with the Markarjan Chain and galaxies like M 87.
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frankz 4.07
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Thanks for sharing the info. So, not too far from Leo. Makes me think of a corrupted catalog.
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