46 panel Milky Way ...
 
Share:
Notifications
Clear all

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.

46 panel Milky Way Panorama

6 Posts
3 Users
4 Reactions
2,467 Views
(@kelvin-hennessy)
Neutron Star
Joined: 9 years ago
Posts: 73
Topic starter  
I have been working on this high resolution panorama of the Milky Way for 5 months - by far my biggest astrophotography project to date. As a bonus I managed to catch Comet C/2017 K2 Panstarrs as it passed near the Blue Horsehead nebula.
It consists of 46 separate RGB image panels using my dual camera arrangement (CentralDS Canon 6D & Sigma 85mm F/1.4 and ASI294MC Pro & Sigma 40mm F/1.4) plus an addition 4 panels of Hydrogen Alpha taken with my ASI294MM Pro & 40mm - over 34 hours of integration time in total
 
Each of the 46 panels was first  integrated in two sessions in APP, then all 46 registered in APP using Mercator Projection with one of the central panes as the reference.  I had "analyse stars" set to 2000, MBB=20, LNC Level 2 5 iterations.  The many trial integration runs each took 4 hours on an overclocked AMD Ryzen 5900X / 64GB RAM / 1GB Pcie Nvme SSD / GeForce RTX2060 Super
 
The resultant FITS file was 6.2 terabytes in size with a resolution of  33748 x 15840
 
I have also included an early trial run image without blending. 
 
To see the  higher resolution version and more technical information please visit my astrobin page - for an even more detailed version you can click on the "Full Resolution" link at the top right.

 

Milky Way from Carina to North America
Milky Way Early Trial

 



   
artem, Laura Ngo, Steven Barnes and 1 people reacted
ReplyQuote
(@Anonymous 174)
Joined: 9 years ago
Posts: 5702
 

Well that is absolutely fantastic! I immediately showed it to my wife. 🙂 Well done, did you use the later version of APP?



   
ReplyQuote
(@kelvin-hennessy)
Neutron Star
Joined: 9 years ago
Posts: 73
Topic starter  
Posted by: @vincent-mod

Well that is absolutely fantastic! I immediately showed it to my wife. 🙂 Well done, did you use the later version of APP?

Thank you so much Vincent.  Yes I used  version 2 beta 4.   The Star reduction module crashed the software - but dont worry this file crashed or locked up at least 3 other  programs too !



   
ReplyQuote
(@kelvin-hennessy)
Neutron Star
Joined: 9 years ago
Posts: 73
Topic starter  

@vincent-mod my panorama made Astrobin Image of the Day today 😀 

It also made the NASA APOD shortlist, getting featured on their "Sky" facebook page and attracting a lot of attention.

Good advertising for APP !



   
ReplyQuote
(@Anonymous 174)
Joined: 9 years ago
Posts: 5702
 

That is very cool, congratulations! I already saw it was a contender indeed. 🙂



   
ReplyQuote
(@stastro)
Black Hole Moderator
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 257
 

Wow, I know how long it took to process 6x62mpx panels, but 46 panels......hats off to you on this one, awesome!!!!



   
ReplyQuote
Share: