2026-10-09 APP 2.0.0-beta48 has been released !
This is mainly a bug fix release for the reported bugs in beta47. In addition it has a significant User Interface performance improvement noticable when you need to process 1000s of images in APP.
2026-10-03 APP 2.0.0-beta47 has been released !
This is a very big release... many code optimizations/rewrites, many parts of APP are much faster and more precise, especially star analysis and registration are much faster ! Big mosaics will go much faster 🙂
And we introduce a new preview filter, which includes the new Adaptive Deep Sky Stretch and a General Levels Stretch, this has been long over due. The old preview filter (the panel on the right side to stretch and preview your data) has not been updated for a couple of years and it is a critical part of any APP session.
Adaptive Deep Sky Stretch or ADSS is a much more intuitive stretch algorithm. It is also color preserving (which is a great new addition in itself ! ) which means that the highlights are no longer bleached, color is maintained from the linear data while stretching. You can simply stretch your data using the sky background level and signal width sliders which work much easier and more intuitive. You no longer need to fiddle with the old complicated sliders with zoom buttons. All the zoom buttons for the sliders are made redundant. And you can enter slider values in the slider value fields yourself. I will make a youtube video in the coming days to explain and fully introduce ADSS. Once the video is ready, it will be highlighted on the forum.
RGB Combine upgrade !. The RGB Combine Tool has been rewritten mostly. The tool is faster and easier to use and most importantly, the Luminance slider to inject a luminance channel or channels into the RGB composite is now working correctly. It no longer bleaches the RGB colors. Combined with the new ADSS preview, you will get much better and easier great composites with great color! I will also explain this in a new youtube video.
Dear Mabula,
today I tried to do comet processing using APP version 2.0.0 beta 13 and got a java.lang.NullPointerException while pointing the comet during the registration process:
It happened twice around or perhaps even at the same image while clicking at the comet. I could not see which image it was. I had the image viewer full screen (1280 x 1048). Then I repeated the registration another time with the image viewer i partial view (approximately 800 x 600px) and the process continued happily.
Not sure if the above makes sense and is of some use, happy to do some further testing if needed.
Nicolàs
The past few days I have been processing several cometary recordings and found that, even at reduced window size, the above error pops up every now and then. In the end I get everything processed, but it takes a lot more time as a result of it, while at times it is hard or even impossible to get through the registration process.
Nicolàs
Last update: I now have a set of 197 comet-subs that constantly fails to register using APP 2.0.0 beta 13, each time at a different sub, but mostly either at the first (sub #1) or the second occasion (sub #10), so I switched back to APP 1.083 and successfully stacked the data there.
I can provide access to my processing computer to Mabula if that is helpful (we did that before).
Nicolàs
Ok, very interesting. Mabula is going to work on the comet feature, so would you mind uploading a subset of comet lights and calibration files to our server?
Hi Vincent,
thanks for your response, I have uploaded 20 lights to InFINNity-Deck-cometRegisterFailure and four masters in a subfolder of that.
Please let me know if you need more lights.
Nicolàs
Thanks Nicolas, I've informed Mabula.
Hi Nicolàs @infinnity-deck,
I am working on the comet processing at the moment and I was looking at your issue. With 2.0.0-beta17 I can not reproduce your issue whatever I try with selecting the comet nucleus.
Can you test with beta17 on your data and let me know if this issue still occurs or not?
Mabula
Dear Mabula,
thanks for your new beta-version! Just now I tested it successfully on that dataset, no more nullpointer exceptions, so all is good.
kind regards,
Nicolàs
Thank you @infinnity-deck for your confirmation!
The next release 2.0.0-beta18 will have many improvements for comet processing, we are close to releasing it as well 😉
Mabula
I'm having a similar issue when I try to register my comet images.
I use many subs (600-1000x5 seconds) with my goto Dob and have been able to do comet registration before in APP but this time I'm stumped.
I've searched the subs for a bad frame but I keep getting this message:
Encountered error in module:
RegistrationActionListener
Error message:
java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "String.equals(Object)" because "<local7>" is null
Cause:
Cannot invoke "String.equals(Object)" because "<local7>" is null
ox.h(FrameListJTable.java:445)
ox.e(FrameListJTable.java:356)
uT.a(RegistrationActionListener.java:1155)
uT.doInBackground(RegistrationActionListener.java:977)
and it fails.
Any thoughts?
Currently on beta29 and I also get a null pointer when skipping an image during comet registration:
Encountered error in module:
RegistrationActionListener
Error message:
java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "pF.execute()" because "<local15>[<local59>]" is null
Cause:
Cannot invoke "pF.execute()" because "<local15>[<local59>]" is null
uT.a(RegistrationActionListener.java:7722)
uT.doInBackground(RegistrationActionListener.java:977)
java.desktop/javax.swing.SwingWorker$1.call(Unknown Source)
java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
Also the image is completely skewed:
This doesn't happen if I place the pointer on the comet before skipping the image.
I have two different series of comet data I have converted to TIFFs in order to remove the stars before stacking. Upon loading the TIFFs I get this error when attempting to register. It won't even allow me to get to the first frame where I ID the comet center. The NullPointerException happens with both sets of data. Beta 2.0 ver 38
