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 all,
I'm trying to run APP to do calibration etc. all the way to integration. At any rate, in the calibration step, I get this "critical warning" (see below).
I have a set of dark frames, bias frames and flats that are all taken at the same gain and offset, and they're all with the same camera and hence same dimensions.
Why am I getting this message? The only thing I can guess is that APP wants Dark Flats, which I am not willing to provide, since that requires collecting a bunch of dark frames at the same exposure as the flats, which happen to be algorithmically determined. Also, the exposure time is so short I do not believe dark frames are required (less than 5 sec). And even if someone else believes dark frames are required, I ought to be able to override this and use the flat frames I have collected. I've been doing things this way for multiple years and I'm not sure why this is suddenly happening now.
Instead of using the "incorrect" bias or darks, I get "calibrated" images that are not calibrated at all. Is there a way around this? Also, do I seriously need Dark Flats? Is this a FITS keyword problem?
Thanks for your help,
Charles
I've only used dark flats if using a dedicated astro camera, and I don't use both bias and dark flats at the same time. Have you looked at your fits header to see if there is anything weird, like if your bias aren't actually marked as bias and so the master bias isn't built?
Figured it out - I have two ways of taking flats depending on the telescope I'm using. In one case, it's just the normal image capture SW set to mark the images as "flats". Processing works "just fine". In the other case, I'm running a Python script that I thought was doing the same thing, but it's not: it is capturing a slightly different image size! Had to really squint to see that. Now, to figure out why this is happening, because it never happened before when I was using a different camera...
Thanks for your thoughts,
Charles Wright
