Apr 9 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 has been released !
It has a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration, for mosaics even faster! 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. Improved Outlier Rejection with LN 2.0 rejection. macOS CMD+A works now in file chooser ! And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming hours...
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.
All --
I shot M101 on two different nights. On the first night, I shot two hours at gain 236 with offset of 1. On the second night, I shot another two hours at gain 236 with offset of 20. Other than the offset, there were no differences in camera settings.
When I first attempted to process using APP, I loaded the lights and calibration frames into a single session. That failed because, when I was 25 % of the way through normalization, I got an error message that the frames were clipped below zero or the calibration frames didn't match. After consulting with folks on CloudyNights, I began to process using multi-session processing. I used the calibration frames from the second night but separated the lights from night 1 and night 2. When I hit normalize, the button grayed out but normalization didn't begin. I was still able to close out of the app, so it wasn't frozen in that sense.
My first question is -- how do I start back up with processing using the registered frames that are all saved in the working folder? Do I really have to load all the frames again?
Second -- how do I avoid what happened when I pressed the normalization button? Is this a known problem?
Third -- do flat frames have to match the offset of the light frames? My sense is that they may not have to because the flat frames I used when I successfully processed the frames from just night # 2 likely had an offset of 1 (I don't know this for sure because I used NINA's flat frame wizard and couldn't find a way to adjust offset for the flat frames).
Fourth -- SOME shooting sessions with my current imaging camera, the ZWO 294 MC Pro, my flat frames don't seem to work! The dust motes increase in number and there is heavy vignetting. How can I avoid this? On other occasions, the flat frames work just fine. I am wondering whether the flat frames are being rotated or improperly applied?
I'd appreciate any help you can give me! My equipment/camera settings/work flow are below:
Celestron Edge 9.25 with focal reducer
CEM70 mount
Celestron OAG ZWO 290 mm mini guiding set up
Optolong Deep Sky filter
ZWO 294 MCPro imaging camera
NINA for shooting with offset adjusted in the sequencer page and then use of flat wizard after the session.
APP for processing (as above) -- I just go from one tab to the next while retaining the default settings. I save all frames at each step.
Thanks!!
Hi @felixa7,
My first question is -- how do I start back up with processing using the registered frames that are all saved in the working folder? Do I really have to load all the frames again?
If you saved the registered frames, load those registered frames as lights in 1) Load. Then skip star analysis and registration and proceed at 5) Normalize. Load or save the project is a current work in progress for the 2.0 stable release, so that is coming.
Second -- how do I avoid what happened when I pressed the normalization button? Is this a known problem?
I am not sure exactly what happened from your description, so Normalize did not start? Nothing happened? This is not a known issue.
Third -- do flat frames have to match the offset of the light frames? My sense is that they may not have to because the flat frames I used when I successfully processed the frames from just night # 2 likely had an offset of 1 (I don't know this for sure because I used NINA's flat frame wizard and couldn't find a way to adjust offset for the flat frames).
No, flat frames can be shot with a different gain/iso as the lights, no problem there 😉 But you need to realize that flats need to be calibrated with darkflats/bias, thos darkflats/bias need to be compatibel with the flats, so those darkflats/bias need to have the same gain/iso and offset as those flats as well.
Fourth -- SOME shooting sessions with my current imaging camera, the ZWO 294 MC Pro, my flat frames don't seem to work! The dust motes increase in number and there is heavy vignetting. How can I avoid this? On other occasions, the flat frames work just fine. I am wondering whether the flat frames are being rotated or improperly applied?
Flat frames are never rotated, the issue must come from incompatible calibration data for your flats and lights. Make sure that you supply bias/darks that match the lights in terms of gain/iso, offset (and temperature and exposure for darks). And make sure that you supply bias/darkflats that match the flats in terms of gain/iso. offset (and temperature and exposure for darkflats).
Let me know if this helps 😉
Mabula
