Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
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.
My first try with Astro Pixel Processor on M42
Sky-Watcher 130/650 PDS Newton, Canon 600Da, Astronomik L2 UV/IR Block
Lights: 20x each 5", 15", 60", 180", 300" ISO800, total 3.1 hours
20x darks per exposure set, 40 flats, 100 bias
I have to say, I'm really impresssed with APP. First I made the BPM, MB and MF. Then a MD for each exposure set, and after that I loaded all the lights at once and let APP do its thing. When integration was finished I couldn't belive how well APP handled the massive dynamic range of this object, with almost no noise. Most of the post processing was done in APP with a little help of Photoshop at the end. I made two stretches, one for the bright core not to be blown out and blended them together in photoshop.
Time for processing after integration was about 30min in APP and PS. In Pixinsight it would have been at least 3hours for a similar result.
I'm still on trial, but I will buy this awesome program for shure.
Things I miss most = comet stacking, deconvolution, kickass denoising, masks
CS, Robert
for zooming in https://www.astrobin.com/389689/C/?nc=user
Hi Robert @robsi,
Thank you for sharing this great image of M42 😉 and welcome the the APP forum !
I am glad that APP is working well for you, the image looks awesome 😉 very well processed.
Comet stacking is soon to be included in APP, the registration engine will get a big upgrade and will then include comet registration.
Same holds for denoising and deconvolution, these will be added to APP as well as soon as possible.
Support for processing with masks will then be implemented in such a way that it will directly integrate with all available post-processing tools, so it directly becomes a global tool sort of speak 😉 That is what I am aiming for...
Kind regards,
Mabula
