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.
Hi,
I posted already a few months ago because I've got an error: "ANALYSE STARS: analysis failed" basically on all my frames. Already back then (on Oct. 1st) I was told that my issue should be fixed with the next version of APP, but when I tried APP 1.075 I got the same problems again.I
Today I was excited to test the newest version, with, among other things, "IMPROVED STAR ANALYSIS MODULE"... but again star analysis fails on all my frames 🙁
What can I do to help this module detecting the stars in my frames?... there are not many stars since I do short exposures (because of Alt-Az mount), but still, there should be enough stars that can be extracted to allow for register to work!
Cheers,
Fred
not sure I can be much help but when that happened to me App gave a list of things to change to better help it detect more stars. Did it not do this for you?
Dear Fred @schullerfred,
If APP 1.077 still fails on your data, I really want to see it. Apologies that is not working yet.
Can you upload data here?
https://ariesprodstor.astropixelprocessor.com:7001/
login and username: appuser
Please create a folder with your name and let me know once uploaded. Please upload lights and all the calibration masters that you have for calibrating the dataset so we can do a proper test and fix this issue 😉 as soon as possible
Kind regards,
Mabula
Dear Fred @schullerfred,
We have 4 light frames in our possesion already and I have checked them quickly.
I am not surprised that APP is failing here, I think something is going wrong with your data capture process and therefore the data is not compatible for Astro Pixel Processor at the moment.
Look at the stretched histogram of the data, something is not going right here.
What software did you use to capture the data? The metadata does not provide much information so it seems to come from software in a very early development fase?
FITS HDUs: 1
HDU1 - SIMPLE = T / Java FITS: Sat Sep 21 21:46:59 CEST 2019
HDU1 - BITPIX = 16
HDU1 - NAXIS = 2 / Dimensionality
HDU1 - NAXIS1 = 1936
HDU1 - NAXIS2 = 1096
HDU1 - PCOUNT = 0 / No extra parameters
HDU1 - GCOUNT = 1 / One group
HDU1 - EXTEND = T / Extension permitted
HDU1 - OBSERVER= ' '
HDU1 - TELESCOP= ' '
HDU1 - ORIGIN = ' '
HDU1 - OBJECT = 'DSO '
HDU1 - DATE-OBS= '2019-09-21T09:46:49.244'
HDU1 - CAMERA = 'ZWO ASI385MC'
HDU1 - CCDTEMP = '17.1 '
HDU1 - EXPTIME = '10.000001'
HDU1 - END
Then in addition the fits metadata is not created correctly to be able to read this for 16bits output. The data is currently not in 16bits format, the maximum value is 16383 which is 14bits output. The fits metadata should make this clear with the Bscale parameter somehow, this keyword is not even there so any software package will not know what to do with this data unless explicitly informed by the sofware user.
Kind regards,
Mabula
Dear Mabula @mabula-admin
thanks for looking into that. I'm recording the data with FireCapture. I am using version 2.6, on Mac. I thought that it was a standard capture software, therefore I'm a bit surprised that it doesn't do the things right...
But indeed, my camera has only 12 bits dynamic range, and FireCapture allows only to choose between 8 bits and 16 bits. What capture software would you recommend (on a Mac) for better compatibility with APP?
Regards,
Fred
I have just uploaded two more lights (and a master dark) that I observed in december, and for which also star analysis fails (actually APP finds 6 stars in one case but fails in the other one, although they look both very similar). At least the histograms don't look that weird. This was with the same capture software, same telescope and same camera as the previous ones.
One more thing: I should add that in other cases (typically when there are more stars visible in my lights), APP runs perfectly well, including star analysis and registration... I agree that, in the case of M57, the histograms look pretty weird, but I don't think that the capture software is the only responsible for these frequent failures.
Best regards,
Fred
