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.
One mainly for Mabula.
I asked here about a couple of months ago whether APP could stack Seestar subs (which of course have already been corrected for Darks and Flats). He asked me to upload them which I did but I never heard any more.
Dear Trevor, @woldsweather
Thank you again for reminding me, it is still on my todo list, unfortunately I was delayed severely due to health issues. I am recovered now and will have a look at it and I will get back to you.
Mabula
Dear Trevor,
I just checked your data and it is very problematic. It is not weird that APP can not detect stars from it.
All the files have the following FITS header:
FITS HDUs: 1
HDU1 - SIMPLE = T
HDU1 - BITPIX = 16
HDU1 - NAXIS = 2
HDU1 - NAXIS1 = 2160
HDU1 - NAXIS2 = 3840
HDU1 - BZERO = 32768.0
HDU1 - BSCALE = 1.0
HDU1 - DATAMIN = 0.0
HDU1 - DATAMAX = 65535.0
HDU1 - SWCREATE= 'PIPP v2.5.9'
HDU1 - END
Indicating it was data manipulated with PIPP. I do not think this means this is data directly from the Seestar or are they?
Then simply looking at a couple if the images, it is clear that something bad has happened with the data somewhere. No or little stars can be seen and there even seems to be a serious issue with the sensor readout, I see 2 parts almost like we have 2 different images folder over each other?
Do you have any idea what happened here, the soon to be released APP 2.0.0-beta47 can detect stars in some of the frames, but all your frames in this batch have the same problems, I suspect PIPP did something bad here.. Can you perhaps share the frames that come directly from the Seestar? :
@mabula-admin Thanks Mabula for checking that Mabula and I hope you are back in good health. I have tried so many dat sets but very possible I had used PIPP. I'll have another go with a recent data set straight out of SS and see how that goes.
