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.
Well- this is weird. I see others have posted the one warning I am getting about you might have underexposed lights, light leakage, or flats/master flats not compatible with lights due to bad sensor offset and a second message saying my flats and darkflats need to have the same gain and exposure time.....
I ran old data and newer data (prior to downloading the new release) which ran just fine but now I get both of these messages with any data set I run with the new release. The images came out fine like before by ignoring the warnings and I ran them also in PI WBPP with no problems. I then removed APP and re-installed it as suggested to someone else but I got the same to messages. I'm confused as to what is going on.
@umasscrew39 See this post in which Mabula explains what the popup means:
https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/appreleases/dark-frame-errors/
Thanks- I saw this before- not sure it helps but I will check things.
@umasscrew39 What data do you get the popup with, mono or color? Did you use a narrowband filter? What exposure time did you use?
Mono using narrowband filters at 300 sec exposures/ which is what I have been using for months
@umasscrew39 How narrow? 7nm? 3nm? What camera do you use? At what gain, offset and temperature? I use an ASI6200MM at 0º C, gain 100 and offset 40 (I think that's what ZWO default it to) and I need to take at least 180 sec exposures with my 3 nm filters for APP to not warn me. And the quantum efficiency of the sensor of this camera is quite high which is why I "get away" with such short exposure times. You really may need to take longer exposures depending on the camera.
The reason is that the master dark has a certain median value plus fluctuations around that median. If some pixel values of the lights are lower than those fluctuations, dark corrections will clip them to zero, which is one reason that the popup warns about. This check was introduced in APP 1.083 which may be is why you didn't see it before. The fact that you have been doing this for months may mean that you have been under exposing your lights for months.
However, it is possible that something else is going on, again as the popup explains.
The ASI6200MM at -10oC gain of 100 and offset 50. 300 sec exposures with a Chroma ha filter (5nm) and OIII filter (3nm). Here is an example.
@umasscrew39 The console window of APP should tell you why the popup is shown. If you want I can have a look at the data. Please upload, say, 5 of each light, dark, darkflat and/or bias to
https://upload.astropixelprocessor.com/
using the word upload for both username and password (your APP credentials will not work) to a folder named umasscrew39_popup and let me know when the upload is done. Thanks!
Sounds good. Upload completed as you requested under umasscrew39_popup. I hope you can find what it is I am doing wrong!
Thank you
@umasscrew39 Thanks for the upload. I see only lights, flats and darks. In order for APP to be able to perform a correct flat calibration, either dark flats or bias are needed. Can you upload those as well?
I believe they are in there but mislabeled as flats. So, there should be some flats and dark flats but all labeled as flats. I can resend just the dark flats.
@umasscrew39 If you tell me which ones are the dark flats then I can rename them myself locally.
@umasscrew39 Never mind. I figured it out. The first five are flats and the second five dark flats.
@umasscrew39 No problem. Like I said, I figured it out 🙂
With these 5 lights, 5 flats, 5 darks and 5 dark flats I do not get the popup. Instead, I get a beautiful pic of the Bubble Nebula. Can you try with these files yourself and see if you can reproduce my result?
ok- I just re-ran it and no issues. So, any idea why I am getting these errors when I now run a full dataset? These are the same darks, flats and darkflats I have been using for any light sets I collect.
@umasscrew39 How many lights, flats, darks and dark flats are there in the full set? And are these sets of 5 randomly chosen? Like I said, the console window of APP should tell you what's going on.
lights can range from 50 to 150 per object
25 flats
25 dark flats
20 darks
All worked fine under the last version of APP
All appear to work fine under the new version if I ignore the warnings
The warnings don't make sense to me. One says I need the same gain setting for my flats and dark flats. They are always at 100, including the lights and that has never changed.
If it doesn't happen in the 5 you uploaded, but does in the dataset, I think the chance is high there is 1 or so in the bulk that has an issue somehow. The console should show you were it gets this warning I think.
All worked fine under the last version of APP
As explained before, that is because this was introduced in the latest version of APP.
All appear to work fine under the new version if I ignore the warnings
The warnings don't make sense to me. One says I need the same gain setting for my flats and dark flats. They are always at 100, including the lights and that has never changed.
As explained by Mabula in the topic that I referred to, the warning in the second popup serves as an indication that APP detected an issue and the popup merely suggests the most common causes.
Do you get the popup as well if you use the same 5 lights but all flats, darks and dark flats? If not then that may be an indication that there is an issue with at least one light. If yes then please try the same 5 flats, darks and dark flats with the full set of lights and see if you then get the popup. That may indicate an issue with the calibration data.
The other warning (about the gain and exposure time of the flats and dark flats) does seem to indicate an issue there.
If you want I can take a look myself but that would require you to upload the full data set which, given the fact that 20 files already consumes 2.2 Gb because of the huge sensor of the ASI6200MM, may take a long time to upload for you and a long time to download for me. Or I could take a look at the flats and dark flats first and see if I can spot the issue.
That is ok but thanks for the offer and your help. I will just run a bunch of tests as you suggest and maybe I can identify the source of the problem. I don't think it indicated exactly where the issue is, but I need to recheck that as I could be wrong.
Thank you again
Hi @umasscrew39,
I have discovered an issue in the calibration engine which might explain some of the issues that you are having:
FIXED, CONCURRENCY ISSUE IN CALIBRATION ENGINE, as mentioned in this topic https://www.astropixelprocessor.com/community/postid/21090/ the calibration engine was not behaving properly. It could not find masterdarkflats for flat calibration in this case allthough they were provided. It was a concurrency issue which will occur if more than 1 master is created in MasterBias, MasterDark, MasterDarkFlat, MasterFlat creation.
I will release this fix today or tomorrow and will let you know when you can download it so you can test if all is okay then 😉
Mabula
Hi Mabula
OK- I ran three large datasets and good news!! Two of them with objects that are bright ran with no warnings. The third is a small object, not as bright and was only a few degrees from a full moon when I imaged it (a very dumb idea but that is another story) and I got one warning about 102 pixels are still clipping to 0 while using the adaptive pedestal. Without the pedestal, 0 pixels were clipping to 0.
Question: I am pretty sure I do not have light leaks or my data are underexposed. Maybe slightly lowering the offset from 50 to 40 would help? Or is it not worth messing with?
I think about 100 is fine, the warning is only there to improve your data in this case. A bit longer exposure might already solve it.
Thanks for the feedback.
I guess a happy ending for all - my data and the program tweak. 🙂
@mabula-admin Hello, I have been working with Dr Christian Sasse on a rig in Australia and Using APP for a while. After installing the the 2.0 beta version I too have been getting that error message, when before I never got it.(using the same gear are data) I ignore it, however I have to wait for x minutes for it to come up, which is a real pain, considering it stops the rest of the process. The 1st time it happened I waited for an hour thinking the whole process was complete only to find the error message had come up and I to wait for another hour to complete the process. . I don't understand the message in the first place and upon ignoring my images are fine. But I waste an hour. I tried re-installing as suggested. doesn't work. If you have to have that message come up maybe it could be at the end of the process or time itself out. If this can't be fixed I'll just go back to an earlier version where this never happened. Let me know so I can a change. Thank you GREAT WORK!
Hawk
I've forwarded your question to Mabula, he should be able to come back soon.
@mabula-admin Hello, I have been working with Dr Christian Sasse on a rig in Australia and Using APP for a while. After installing the the 2.0 beta version I too have been getting that error message, when before I never got it.(using the same gear are data) I ignore it, however I have to wait for x minutes for it to come up, which is a real pain, considering it stops the rest of the process. The 1st time it happened I waited for an hour thinking the whole process was complete only to find the error message had come up and I to wait for another hour to complete the process. . I don't understand the message in the first place and upon ignoring my images are fine. But I waste an hour. I tried re-installing as suggested. doesn't work. If you have to have that message come up maybe it could be at the end of the process or time itself out. If this can't be fixed I'll just go back to an earlier version where this never happened. Let me know so I can a change. Thank you GREAT WORK!
Hawk
Dear Hawk @hawkula,
I have made a note that I will try to change the behaviour. The warning is very important though and I am sorry that you don't understand it. Let me try to clarify: if your data is okay in terms of gain and offset, temperature, exposure time for data calibration and if you don't have a light leakage in the optical train, that warning appears because you are clearly underexposing your subs. Many background pixels clip to zero and that causes the warning. Your results would be much better if you would expose longer for sure ! So for me, it is vital that the warning is there and we put it there to help astrophotographers get better results of course.
Anyway, I will try to change the moment of the warning and I might change the threshold a bit as well.
Mabula
