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 am thinking of upgrading from an Ha-modified T3i to a dedicated astrocam. But, I would like to better understand what this buys me in the final image. I shoot in mostly B7+ skies and stack in Astro Pixel Processor. APP’s SNR per RGB channel typically is 1-2 dB.
If I move to a dedicated astrocam, how much of an increase in SNR can I expect? Example below compares the Full Well Capacity and Read Noise of my T3i to the SvBony 405cc.
FWC RN. Dynamic Range (FWC/RN)
T3i. 21Ke. 2.9e. 7200
SV405 63Ke. 1.2e.
The SvBony is 3x better at FWC, and about 2.5x better RN. Does this translate to an SNR increase of about 5dB? I know I will have improved dynamic range, but does that also lead to SNR improvement? Light pollution really limits what I can cleanly process.
Thanks in Advance!
Edited by martinontheroad,
Hi Martin @martinontheroad,
Thank you very much for your question.
First of all, SNR or Signal to Noise Ratio can be reported in a lot of different ways. We do not report it in decibel or dB. We simply report the signal to noise ratio, so Signal divided by Noise or Signal/Noise. This way was thought to me by during my astrophysics studies. We hardly used the dB notation.
See here for more explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal-to-noise_ratio
Decibel is logarithmic. Our SNR value is linear. So SNR of 10 in APP is 10x better than SNR of 1 in APP. For me, this is much more intuitive than using Decibel for SNR. Decibel is better with huge dynamic range between signal and noise...
Now, regarding your question, this is very hard to give you a good answer, because the resulting SNR depends on many aspects not relating to your camera's sensor. Like the object itself that you image, or the sky conditions.
You indicate that the SvBony is 3x better at full well capacity, meaning the pixels can collect much more photons before being saturated and the read noise is 2,5 better... but for the astrocamera, this depends on the gain which you use of course. Depending on the gain the FWC changes as well...
Generally speaking, I would expect the SvBony to outperfrom the T3i clearly with the bigger wells and lower read noise in general. I would advise you to use low gain with the SvBony and longer exposures when compared to exposure times with your T3i as well to use the well capacity 😉
How this will translate to typical SNR with your results with the SvBony is still hard to tell because we have many other noise factors, like the dark current of the sensors and the shot noise of the signal, so it is not a simpel calculation. The amount of dithering between your subs will also influence the SNR of your integrations... but I would certainly expect the SNR will be better with the SvBony 😉 and you will clearly see this visually in your results.
Mabula
