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.
I imaged M86 and have a Tiff file. I would like to have someone look at it and critique it. It looks like a couple of galaxies are too light and hard to see that they are galaxies. The file is larger than 2GB so how do I upload it?
You can save it as a jpeg image and upload here, or take a screenshot.
@msamazing Convert too jpeg and add to a reply to this thread for anyone to see. Is there something specific you want to find out?
File uploaded as a JPEG.
@cwm2col uploaded thank you!
@msamazing Looks like a perfectly fine and actually really good image to me. Which are the galaxies that you have doubts about?
@wvreeven I thought possibly the galaxies were a little too bright in the center. I am new to the hobby so wasn't sure.
I thought possibly the galaxies were a little too bright in the center.
If you mean that they seem overexposed then that certainly is a possibility but it is hard to tell from the JPEG. You can load the original FITS file as it came out of the integration in APP into APP and hover your mouse button over the cores of the centers. That should tell you if they are overexposed or not. If they are then you could consider using shorter exposure times next time. It is hard to tell if that's advisable since we don't know what telescope, camera and exposure time you used.
I was using the Sky-Watcher Esprit ED 10mm f5.5 along with the ASI 2600 color camera. The exposures were 2 minutes.
@wvreeven I was trying to figure out how to open the TIFF file directly in APP. I can't figure out how to do it.
@msamazing Just load it as a light and then double click the name in the files list.
