May 27 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta45 has been released !
Fully Multi-Threaded LNC, many improvements for the registration engine, platform upgrade, and further tuning of internal memory consumption and memory release back to OS.
Apr 14 2026: Google Pay, Apple Pay & WeChat Pay added as payment options
Update on the 2.0.0 release & the full manual
We are getting close to the 2.0.0 stable release and the full manual. The manual will soon become available on the website and also in PDF format. Both versions will be identical and once released, will start to follow the APP release cycle and thus will stay up-to-date to the latest APP version.
Once 2.0.0 is released, the price for APP will increase. Owner's license holders will not need to pay an upgrade fee to use 2.0.0, neither do Renter's license holders.
First of all, my hat is off to all of those at Aries who have made beta-41 so fast and efficient. I am amazed at how much faster it runs as compared to earlier versions. Well done!
I have a question and potential bug (or user error) when attempting to stack comets near dawn, when there are precious few stars peeking through the morning sky. I imaged the comet Saturday morning April 18 2026. APP Star Analysis indicated 8-20 stars available depending upon the frame - a very low star count, I know. When I forged ahead to Registration using Comet mode or Normal mode, it completed 35 of 36 registration tasks and just hung there. For hours. In Comet Mode, it never even moved on to selecting the comet nucleus.
Am I doing something incorrect, process-wise? Is this too few stars for APP to even attempt it? Or is this a potential software issue? This may not be the world's best comet data, but I'd like to see what I can make of it. At the very least, it would be useful to get a warning error if this is something APP cannot complete. I attach a screen shot and logs. Thank you for your consideration and keep up the excellent work!
Regards, Martin Jordan
San Diego, California
Hi Martin @martinontheroad,
Thank you very much for your post. Happy to hear that 2.0.0-beta41 is showing the improvements 🙂 !
You can definitely try to use comet mode, but without using the stars (the one-star mode). Did you try that? Can it complete the task successfully then?
Regarding the stars, yes, there could be some issue/bug here in the code with the low star count or quality of the data. Can you upload the data here for me to test and fix this issue?
https://upload.astropixelprocessor.com/
username: uploadData
password: uploadTestData
Please make a folder with your name and issue like: Martin-Comet-issue
and upload the data there and then let me know once done.
I will be happy to solve this for the next release 😉
Mabula
@mabula-admin - I have tried using the following Registration Modes with no success several times: Comet/One Star, and Normal. Prior to processing in APP, I culled the worst frames out using Star Analysis. I had planned on further culling based on Registration and Normalization. I imaged the comet using my Dwarf 3 and am uploading the entire folder, to include some of the Dwarf 3 information files. The Dwarf 3 appends all files that cannot be stacked with "failed_" so do not be alarmed by all the "failed" files. The file upload you requested should be finished soon.
When I did stack in Comet Mode, APP asked me to put the reticle on the comet nucleus and click (as normal), but after that first click, it just did not do anything else. I even let the computer sit overnight to see if it there was something that just took a lot of CPU cycles, but it stayed in that interim stage between "Click 1" and "Click 2."
Regards, Martin
Hi Martin @martinontheroad,
I have done some tests with your data. I can process the data without any bugs in the following way:
- 0) Color Settings, make sure the settings are right ! the pattern must be set to supported, APP recognizes the pattern as RGGB correctly. Use the Adaptive Airy Disc algoriithm. Disable force Bayer/XTrans CFA
3) Disable Star Analysis
4) Register in comet mode. Simply select the comet in all the images where APP asks you to. Then it works fine.
I tested in 2.0.0-beta44
But the result is still bad, the comet is not well detected in all frames, so the result does not look good.
If I enabled star analysis, I get star counts that we can use in almost all frames. But if we then start the comet registration mode, the registration on the stars is not working as expected because the comet is actually in the star list... That is upsetting proper registration on the stars. Normally if there plenty of stars, the comet is simply disregarded in the registration hypothesis. But now it is included and things don't work well.
Let me work a bit on this to see if I can improve it and I will get back to you later 😉
Mabula
@mabula-admin - Thank you very much for looking into the problem. I knew the data was dodgy at best, but the way beta-41 behaved seemed out of character. I will install beta-44 (or the latest!) and follow your recommendations.
Thanks again to you and the APP team for creating a fantastic product. I perform all of my stacking and light pollution removal/background calibration in APP. When I move the result into Pixinsight, I have yet to really need to run their MGC gradient correction process. Every time I do, the clean up is essentially zero.
Regards, Martin
Hi Martin @martinontheroad,
I have fixed 4 problems in the comet mode with the help of your data 😉
- if some frames can not be registered on the stars, the last image to detect the comet was not correctly shown
- if some frames can not be registered on the stars, the counter for the amount of images to register and the current image's counter as reported in the comet mode were not correct.
- If registering in the comet mode, the comet itself is removed from the star list so it can not create a problem when trying to register on the stars ( this was a clear problem here with so little stars... so a good fix !)
- if star registration is simply not possible, a warning will appear instead of a bug/error window.
The fixes will be part of 2.0.0-beta45.
This is the result now, when registering with stars and the comet and using TimeShot metadata. You only need to select the comet in first and last image where the images were possible to register on the stars. So only a couple of frames just have too little stars to be used.
But if you disable star analysis and do comet mode, then you are able to use all images of course 😉
@mabula-admin I am glad my humble data set was able to help improve APP. I knew this data set was not clean, but there was enough “comet” visible that it should have stacked something. I certainly appreciate you taking the time to find a fix. One more reason why APP rocks! I look forward to beta-45.
Regards, Martin
You are most welcome Martin @martinontheroad,
Thank you again for sharing the issue with us !
I will try to release beta45 as soon as I have fixed 2 other issues on my list.
Mabula
