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 Mabula,
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Version 1.075 introduces the Mercator Projection as one of the options to project data. This greatly improves big mosaics of (in my case) e.g. the Milky Way. In your release notes you have a picture with some examples of what the Center of Projection (CoP) settings do.
I tried to play around a bit with the settings in my 34 panel mosaic of the Milky Way from Scorpius to Perseus (about 150 degrees field of view), but viewing one individual frame in registered mode took already quite long to display and didn't give much insight in what the final mosaic would look like. I generated a couple of scaled-down test mosaics but that took even longer per setting.
There are 3 settings:
- Rotation
- Move CoP horizontally
- Move CoP vertically
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Playing around with the CoP settings rapidly made things worse than just leaving them at zero, and in combination with the rotation I was really getting confused. Things probably weren't helping that with the specific registration I used at that time was that the reference frame was the one at the extreme end of the long edge of the mosaic.
Could you please explain where the zero points for the projections are located, and in which order the rotation and moves are executed? Is there any coupling with the rotation angle in the Tools tab, I noticed that the angles didn't quite correspond?
This would really help me in getting the most out of this great new feature!
(And feel free to use equations, that only clarifies things more in my case.)
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Thanks in advance
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I'll ask Mabula if he can give some hints. 🙂 I do wonder why that right part is so different, was it a meridian flip there maybe?
I followed galactic coordinates in an equatorial coordinate system, what you see is similar to the zenith hole in alt-az mounts, let's call it the polar hole! 😉
With a field rotator I could have circumvented this, but I don't have one and doing the field rotation by hand was too tedious and not really needed. The fields were chosen to have equal declination in sets of 3, except for near the pole where 10 fields of equal declination were used. Some day (given clear skies and moonless nights and time) I'll add more fields near the pole.
Status of the background removal (slow as expected) is as follows:
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I'm still refining it, so this is a snapshot of work in progress...
Wauw, I think it's the biggest project I've seen to date. Seems like you have a ton of signal.
