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.
Good morning! Vincent, thanks for your devotion to the forum - hope you and Mabula have a great time at Astrofest. I expect one of the hot topics will be Starlink and the other upcoming mega-satellite constellations and their effect on astronomers. I wonder if people have ideas on how best to deal with this situation as astroimagers. Both in terms of imaging techniques and processing techniques. More and shorter subs, more dithering, advanced rejection algorithms for example? Might be a topic to bring up with Mabula in terms of APP. Maybe he’s already thinking about it.
thanks, Wayne
Thank you Wayne, that's very kind of you! Mabula is in London already, I'll be joining this Thursday and won't be here till the Tuesday after that. It'll be my first astro-event I actually go to. 😉 Going to be fun.
Well Starlink, isn't that the hot topic indeed. Personally, I think it'll be fine for a while, dithering and simply stacking with outlier rejection will fix a lot of the issues. It becomes another story when the sky will be really full of them, but I wonder how much of an issue that will really be. There are great concerns for radio astronomers for sure. You might get an idea about the difficulty when imaging M42, which is full of geo-stationary satellites. Here's an little article about that; https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-blogs/imaging-foundations-richard-wright/satellites-begone-how-to-remove-satellite-trails-from-your-astrophotography/
