I read about how installing KStars catalogs locally can speed up platesolving. Unfortunately, I seem to have broken it entirely. I copied the Windows files and insstalled them in a folder on an SSD drive. In Sirl Astometry preferences I point to what I believe to be the appropriate files > note all of the .dat files also carry a .xz extension which is unfamiliar to me (e.g., namedstars.dat.xz). When I attempt to platesolve I get an error that Siril can’t open the local catalog. I don’t see any way to remove them from my preferences.
xz is a compression file format for storage and downloading, you should just uncompress the files before using them. If you don’t have a software able to do that on windows, I suggest a free software like 7-zip: https://7-zip.org/
Thanks Vincent. I saw this right after I had the sense to ask Bing (chatGPT4) what an xz file is. Duh. I pointed Siril at the decompressed .dat files and it works perfectly now. I used to be better at figuring this stuff out but I’m approaching 75 and I have been out of practice for years.