Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. We extensively optimized many critical parts of APP. All has been tested to guarantee correct optimizations. Drizzle and image resampling is much faster for instance, those modules have been completely rewritten. Much less memory usage. LNC 2.0 will be released which works much better and faster than LNC in it's current state. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
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.
Ordered. It's not that much money and I can send it back but suspect it will help in any case.
Now, any speculation on why my flats do not eliminate this vignetting -- or, for that matter, the big defect that is on my non-focal-reducer image of Andromeda above?
Thanks much!
- Rich
At the moment not really sure no, these are very difficult to pinpoint as it's hardware specific, I can only suggest some things that might help but I would also advice to check with someone local to you (like a observatory) to go over the setup maybe.
Well, I received my 2" adapter, and I'm sorry to say it did not help with vignetting on Andromeda. Perhaps slightly, I could dig up the image. However, the 2" adapter is a superior setup for regular use and I will be using it in the future.
I suspect that my issue is that I got the cheapest available field flattener/focal remover. I should have spent the extra money for the Celestron one designed for my sct. Lesson learned.
Thanks!
- Rich
PS - in general, I would say that Andromeda is not a good target for my setup with it's long focal length. It is so huge with nebulosity everywhere that it highlights vignetting and makes background subtraction very difficult.
Oh that's a pitty, good it does help in the setup though! Keep us posted if you get to a better result, would be good to know.
