Common issues & solutions

Note

If you find any bugs/errors that you cannot solve, please open an issue on GitHub

General solutions

Run pip install planetmapper --upgrade in a terminal to make sure you are running the latest version of PlanetMapper. It is possible that your bug may have been fixed in a recent update (you can also check the release notes for each version on GitHub).

Installation issues

PlanetMapper requires a minimum Python version of 3.10, so if you get ERROR: No matching distribution found for planetmapper when trying to install PlanetMapper, it is likely that your python version is too old. You can check your Python version by running python3 --version in a terminal.

SPICE Errors

If you have any errors caused reported by the SPICE system, it is likely that it doesn’t have the correct SPICE kernels loaded. Therefore, make sure you have the appropriate SPICE kernels downloaded to your computer and that you have set the kernel directory correctly.

`SpiceNOLEAPSECONDS` Error

This error usually occurs when SPICE has not loaded any of your desired kernels. This may be because PlanetMapper is not looking in the correct directory for your kernels, so make sure you have set the kernel directory correctly.

`SpiceSPKINSUFFDATA` Error

This error usually occurs when SPICE has successfully loaded some kernels, but is missing ephemeris data for either the target body or the observer body. This may be because you have not downloaded the appropriate kernel containing the ephemeris data for this body.

The error message should tell you which body is missing, and you can then identify the correct kernel to download by searching the NAIF database. For example, if you are missing data for a planetary body, you can search the generic_kernels/spk/satellites/aa_summaries.txt file to identify which kernel need downloading.

Planets appear are in the wrong position

This is likely to be due to an issue with your SPICE kernels or settings, possible fixes include…

Make sure you are using the correct observer - e.g. a planet will appear in a different position from Earth and from JWST.
Make sure you are using the correct observation time - times in PlanetMapper default to UTC, so make sure there are no time zone conversions needed.
Make sure you have the latest version of any SPICE kernels, especially for any observers like HST or JWST which have have locations which are difficult to predict accurately.
Make sure you are using the correct aberration correction.
If you are using WCS information saved in the FITS header to automatically set the disc position, note that telescope pointing information (i.e. the WCS information) is never perfect. For example, due to the errors in guide star tracking, JWST pointing is only accurate to ~0.5”.

PlanetMapper crashes when running graphical user interface over SSH

Recent versions of XQuartz appear to have a font handling bug which can cause PlanetMapper to crash when running the user interface over an SSH connection using X11 forwarding:

X Error of failed request:  BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request:  45 (X_OpenFont)
  Value in failed request:  0x60027c
  Serial number of failed request:  3572
  Current serial number in output stream:  3573

As a temporary workaround, you can set the PLANETMAPPER_USE_X11_FONT_BUGFIX environment variable to true on your remote machine before running PlanetMapper if you experience this issue. You can add the following line to to your .bash_profile file to automatically set this environment variable:

export PLANETMAPPER_USE_X11_FONT_BUGFIX=true

This tells the PlanetMapper user interface to replace certain characters with ASCII equivalents (e.g. ↑ is replaced with ^) which seems to prevent the use of the fonts which cause XQuartz to crash. Note that this will make the user interface slightly more ugly, but should not affect functionality. If you are still having issues after trying this workaround, you can add a comment to the GitHub issue.