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 have encountered a problem when stacking mosaic frames from the ZWO Seestar
the Seestar does not create panels in a rectilinear fashion; instead it makes a series of panels in a spiral around a central point till the desired framing is completed and then repeats the process till it is manually stopped
the option of stacking individual panes doesn’t exist. The only way is to input all frames and stack as a mosaic
this worked when I tried previously with less than 200 sub frames
I now have an instance with over 350 individual FITS frames; when I try and stack APP progresses to the point when the registration task is 80 % complete; the DDC calculation starts; and then APP simply hangs. Thas repeated several times
any suggestions as to how to solve this problem would be most gratefully welcomed
lots of people own Seestars these days and the new mosaic mode has a pretty good take up, so this may not be an isolated issue
Thanks in Advance
Narayan
It may be APP is not hanging. It could be just taking an exponentially long long time to do a mosaic from that many individual frames, especially with DCC enabled.
Hi Narayan @seeker372011,
Thank you very much for reporting this issue and your clear explanation of it.
I think I understand what is happening. Let me explain. The current way for APP to calculate a mosaic is to try to register all those mosaic frames to each other to learn how they are connected. This process will take some time, but I see that you already got to the 80% point where indeed all the earlier information is used to build up the actual mosaic. Maybe the calculation becomes very big and it will ask a lot from your computer. How many cpu threads and RAM do you have and use?
Perhaps you want to upload all the 350 frames so I can have a try and find a solution to make it happen?
Can you upload it here:
https://upload.astropixelprocessor.com/
username: uploadData
password: uploadTestData
Can you make a folder with your name and issue like: Narayan-Seesstar-mosaic-issue
and upload the data there? Thanks !
Mabula
Hi Mabula
just uploading 352 subs from a Seestar mosaic
my laptop has 32 G of RAN and APP is using 31 threads
Thank you!
Narayan
Hi, Former Seestar Owner, when stacking the Seestar Fits (especially when using the mosaic mode in the Seestar), under #4 Registration, don't use "Mosaic" in the Registration Mode, use "Normal." Then under #6 Integrate under Composition Mode, Use "Full" not "Reference." Alternatively, you can use "Reference" but you will need to manually add the Seestar Stacked Mosaic Fit File and manually select that file as a reference frame after Analyse Stars runs. I posted response a couple months ago that has a more detailed set of instructions ( https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/main-forum/seestar-s50-new-mosaic-framing-mode-stacking-registration-takes-very-long-time/#post-31583i
Hi Mabula
just uploading 352 subs from a Seestar mosaic
my laptop has 32 G of RAN and APP is using 31 threads
Thank you!
Narayan
Hi Narayan @seeker372011,
Thank you very much for the upload. We have received it in good order 😉 I will test it in the coming days.
Hi, Former Seestar Owner, when stacking the Seestar Fits (especially when using the mosaic mode in the Seestar), under #4 Registration, don't use "Mosaic" in the Registration Mode, use "Normal." Then under #6 Integrate under Composition Mode, Use "Full" not "Reference." Alternatively, you can use "Reference" but you will need to manually add the Seestar Stacked Mosaic Fit File and manually select that file as a reference frame after Analyse Stars runs. I posted response a couple months ago that has a more detailed set of instructions ( https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/main-forum/seestar-s50-new-mosaic-framing-mode-stacking-registration-takes-very-long-time/#post-31583i
Thank you very much Brannon @brannonqgmail-com for your help and good suggestion. I think the registration mode normal should always suffice unless 1 or more frames don't have any overlap with the reference frame. I guess with the SeeStar mosaic mode, you would stlll have everything overlapping with the reference frame, right?
@mabula-admin The issue with Mosaic mode is the Seestar will take photos in a spiral pattern from the center of the frame (see below). When you throw all the subs into stacking software, any reference frame will limit what gets stacked (unless you can choose 'full' instead of 'reference'). APP is by far the best at doing this but if you choose "Mosaic" in Registration it will take forever, I am guessing because there is so much overlap in the subs. Also, since the Seestar is mainly 10 sec subs, there are thousands being stacked at a time. At the end of the Seestar session, the unit will auto stack the mosaic image and it will be a separate fits file. If you add that file to the lights and manually select that as the reference frame, APP will overlap and align all those subs to that image and produces great results.
Hi Brannon @brannonqgmail-com and Narayan @seeker372011,
Thank you very much Brannon for your explanation. I fully understand it now. Indeed loading the mosaic image from the seestar and setting it as a reference should solve all issues and it should complete without issue using the normal registration mode. When integrating, I would suggest to even disable the reference from stacking, by deselecting that mosaic frame in the list after step 5) normalize, because the mosaic made by the seestar is already including all data and might be of less quality than the APP produced result. I will try to test it on Narayan's data.
Narayan, did you try to integrate your data with this tip from Brannon?
Mabula
Thanks Brannon and Mabula. Unfortunately due to some home renovations I have had to pack away my laptop for a couple of weeks and haven’t had a chance to try out your suggestion
I’ll do that as soon as I am able to- maybe end of next week and for the sake of completeness report back here .
Thank you for taking the time to respond
clesr skies( haven’t seen any myself since December!)
Hi Narayan, @seeker372011
Have you tried yet?
Using the new APP 2.0.0-beta32 which you can download from the Downloads page, I was able to process your mosaic with issues using the mosaic registration mode.
In 3) Analyse stars, I set the star count target to 100 and the Cosmic Ray/Noise reducer to 16 and all went fine. This is very helpful because the seestar data with short exposures is a bit noisy. The registration of the whole mosaic for the 350 frames did not take that long even because of the low star count.
Mabula
@mabula-admin that’s fantastic news! Thank you so very much
unfortunately my laptop is still packed away as my home renovations are still underway so I haven’t had a chance to try but sounds like the solution has been found
many thanks
Narayan
Hi Narayan, @seeker372011
Have you tried yet?
Using the new APP 2.0.0-beta32 which you can download from the Downloads page, I was able to process your mosaic with issues using the mosaic registration mode.
In 3) Analyse stars, I set the star count target to 100 and the Cosmic Ray/Noise reducer to 16 and all went fine. This is very helpful because the seestar data with short exposures is a bit noisy. The registration of the whole mosaic for the 350 frames did not take that long even because of the low star count.
Mabula
Hi Mabula
finally got a chance to try ..downloaded 2.0.0-beta 33 and the mosaic mode worked like a charm. Took a little while but not terribly long.
I much prefer the mosaic mode to using the Seestar stack as a reference as I can adjust the cropping
thanks for your support !
Narayan
