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.
Having just broken the sound barrier with 8-minute exposures, unguided, following software changes to my Raspberry Pi's periodic error correction, I wanted to ask the question:
Are the following equivalent?
1. Seven 8-minute frames using bin2 with 2x drizzle.
2. Seven 32-minute frames using bin1 with no drizzle.
In terms of signal-to-noise are they equivalent?
Clearly #2 will have better resolution but should #1 come close?
Two nights ago I captured seven 8-minute frames of PacMan in Ha (see attachment "PacMan_Ha_7x8m_bin2_no-drizzle".) Compare that to "PacMan_Ha_7x8m_bin2_drizzle-2x".
Is the drizzled image close to what I could expect by capturing seven 32-minutes frames using bin1?
I am wondering if bin2 imaging is a better option for me considering that I have a relatively slow f/5.9 refractor and a camera that is least sensitive to red.
Thank you.
Those are very good questions to which I have no certain answer. I would think using bin 1 will always give you better details as it's the best and most direct way to gather real data, whereas bin 2 is not necessarily solved by drizzling as far as I understand it. I could be wrong though, but I thought there's a difference between upsampling and dithering in this case. Bin2 is usually used to gather color data with more sensitivity and faster and then combining that with bin1 data which has the detail. Maybe @mabula-admin has more to say about it.
