Missing stars from INDI Simulator?

Published on 24 May 2023 at 09:30

Before you dive in in this article I advise you to first read my previous articles covering how to make your custom Raspberry PI astro instalation:

 

INDI Library has great collection of drivers for various astronimical equipment. But what if weather outside is terrible for month or two? What to do then? Perhaps you would like to test new feature of your astronomical software, like plate solving, guiding or yust capture an image. Without clear skies you are dommed.

 

Fortunatelly INDI library comes to resque with included CCD simulator driver. It simulates astronomical camera and even display stars! Thats realy handy, but there is a catch. I setup my INDi Web manager to stars CCD simulator driver, lunched KStars and start EKOS. Everithing went well until I pressed capture button. I Did get picture from CCD simulator, but with no visible stars.

I did quick google search and realized that I'm missing Guide Star Catalog (GSC). With some more googling, I come across this INDIlib forum thread.

 

So all you have to do is to open your Terminal and follow this steps: 

  1. Run GIT clone command to download catalog
    git clone https://git.launchpad.net/gsc
  2. Move to newly created gsc directory
    cd gsc
  3. Make new directory that will contain cmake build
    mkdir build
  4. Move to that new directory
    cd build
  5. Configure cmake for gsc catalog
    cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..
  6. And finally install gsc catalog so that INDI simulator can find it
    make install
  7. Run KStars and start EKOS and capture image

Yeeey! There are beautiful stars! Plate solving, guiding etc., will now work and you can have a lot of fun with it.

Clear Skies!

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