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.
I have another issue with satellite trails (plus asteroids this time too). This one is perplexing to me and you'll see why soon. I have started a two panel mosaic of NGC 1333 & vdB 16. This is of course an area near the asteroid belt so there are a lot, but also satellites.
See my image on the left, which was a single panel integration - asteroid trails are there still but no satellites. I used the settings of LN MAD Winsor Clip - Kappa 3 - Iterations 1 for the single panel.
On the right is my two panel mosaic - now we have both asteroids and satellites. Having seen these asteroid trails in the single pane integration I figured I ought to increase the aggressiveness for the mosaic and used LN MAD Winsor Clip - Kappa 2.5 - Iterations 2.
This is baffling to me because there have been no frames added to this except the ones below it for the mosaic. What am I doing wrong here? Should I use LN MAD Sigma Clip, change the kappa or iterations? These satellites are driving me nuts! I have another integration with geostationary sats on a target near Orion which is also having a problem getting them rejected. Each panel is 210 frames. I really don't want to spend another 36 hour integration wait more than once again so hoping to get it right on the next one before running. Thanks.
Sigma clipping should be able to take care of those for sure. Maybe you could upload a few frames for me to try out? Like 10?
@vincent-mod
Yes I can do that later. Tried again with another integration with the settings more aggressive, Kappa 2.0 and iterations 3. It is somehow worse. I am using the diffraction protection set to 5. Could using this cause issues?
That is really odd, with that many frames it should be fairly easy to reject even with less aggressive settings. Unless maybe this region is so bad it becomes too tricky somehow, would love seeing that myself in the data. I don't think diffraction protection would prevent that, that's meant for the borders of stars mainly.
So I have gotten a good result finally with the satellite trails (still have yet to run something on the one above with asteroids). I had to disable diffraction protection (I had it set to 5 pixels). Perhaps some note should be made somewhere in the documentation that this can cause problems with trail rejection? I tried lowering kappa very low, increased iterations to 5, and nothing worked. I could find nothing else that worked besides disabling diffraction protection.
Here are the rejection maps for each. I believe the file names should give the settings info but if not the dark one is kappa 2.0, iterations 5, and diffraction protection 5. The green one that rejected trails is kappa 2.5, iterations 3, diffraction protection none. I am running another now to see if I can get the kappa back to the standard 3.0 and iterations lowered to 2 to avoid rejecting more data than I need to.
That is very interesting @jtrezzo thanks for sharing. I never had this particular problem with that option selected. Good to keep in mind then.
