Mar 28 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta40 will be released in 7 days.
It did take a long time to have the work finished on this and it will have a major performance boost of 30-50% over 2.0.0-beta39 from calibration to integration. 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. And more, all will be added to the release notes in the coming weeks...
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.
APP doesn't seem to like my flats. The work flow works just fine as long as I don't use flats and consequently this means I can't generate a Bad Pixel Map, So, the question is. How do you shoot your flats?
I don't have the budget for any expensive gear.
let me add a caveat, I only get error messages or failure when I am trying to create a BPM, otherwise the flats seem to work fine.
I shoot my flats using a flat-field generator. These aren't necessarily super expensive, the only real requirement is that the panel is able to produce a very even illuminated surface. I personally just lock my focuser and everything when the session is done in my garden, take it back inside and when I feel like it, I put on the flat-field generator, hook it up to Sequence Generator Pro and I start with using the flat-field wizard. If you don't have SGP, try to see if you can get the ADU count on the flat taken with something else, when working in 16-bit (which SGP always does) you target that ADU to be around 30.000. Which is the same as half-way the maximum spectrum your camera can take. Never do this by looking at the spectrum on the camera itself, those spectra are usually not lineair. If you reaaaaally have to look at that, aim for a peak at about 75% of the max you can see on there.
If you can only take sky-flats, things get a bit more complicated (I think). You cover the scope with some very even layers of white fabric (pulled tight) and use it under the early morning sky, preferably either clear or with an even layer of clouds. You want to aim for the same illuminations as described above. It's best to do this rather quick, the sun is rising and changing the light coming in fast. Personally I made this to work pretty nice, but I was getting a bit tired of having to get up super early just for that. 😉 And I didn't really like the nature of it, being less concise, which is why I went for a generator. Loving that ever since.
For a very good BPM, use very long darks (like 10 min subs), lots of good bias frames and indeed flats. What error do you get when you want to use them?
