June 24 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta46 has been released !
Improved internal memory configuration (lower ! memory usage), fixed beta45 startup issue, fixed Set Save Directory & 2-panel mosaics.
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.
I took the images for this mosaic on a recent trip to the cold, very dark sky near Mt Hutt skifield in the South Island of new Zealand. I had the camera mounted on my Star Adventurer mount with a ball-head.
I originally tried other panorama creation software but the vignetting even with flats applied was too severe.
AstroPixelProcessor made the job easy ! The second image was the initial attempt and shows severe banding due to the vignetting cause by having the lens at wide open aperture. (and failed star alignment to the left) The first image is the result of using settings I found somewhere online (I cant remember where) that advised to use many more stars in the analysis stage and more advanced registration / integration settings. (15% MBB / 2nd degree LNC 10 iterations).  The light pollution removal tool was excellent in removing the last of the banding.
The images were taken with a Canon 6D, Samyang 135mm F2 lens at F2.4, 10 seconds exposure, ISO 6400.
I took a separate set of flats, darks and flat-darks upon my arrival back in Australia, by placing the camera in my fridge for an hour to approximate the 5 degree Celsius imaging conditions.Â
Processing the mosaic took about 6 hours (intel i7-6700K overclocked to 4.7GHz / 32GB RAM / PCIe SSD / NVidia GTX1060 6GB)
I plan to do a lot more mosaics with the 6D / 135mm combination.
Oh how jealous I am! I lived in NZ for a year on the South Island and was already blown away by the sky close to a big city like Christchurch. Unfortunately never had the time to get to even darker skies. I only used a tripod to take this one; oh how I will miss these skies. 🙂 Great result! I made the mosaic by first stacking individual parts, correcting those and then creating it.
