MAY 4 2026: APP 2.0.0-beta44 has been released !
New improved internal memory controls should now work on all computers
May 1 2026: APP 2.0.0-beta43 has been released !
Improved internal memory controls (much more stable and faster on big datasets), fixed CPU image viewer, fixed Narrowband extraction demosaic algortihms.
Apr 29 2026 APP 2.0.0-beta42 has been released !
New improved Normalization engine, Fixed random crashes in integration, fixed RGB Combine & Calibrate Star Colors, fixed Narrowband extraction algorithms, new development platform with performance gains, bug fixes in the tools, etc...
Apr 14 2026: Google Pay, Apple Pay & WeChat Pay added as payment options
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.
I use an Optolong L-Extreme with my OSC to gather Ha with RGGB/"Ha-Oiii extract Ha" and O3 with RGGB/"Ha-Oiii extract Oiii" and I also have an
Optolong L-Synergy filter which gathers Sii/Oiii. To produce SHO images I then need S2.
I have tried using the algorithm RGGB/Sulfur II (SII) and combining this result with the Ha and O3 extracted above.
I also tried using "supported/Adaptive Airy disc" to produce a color image and then extract the channels and use the red as S2. i then combine this either with the Ha and O3 as above - or I run "Ha-Oiii extract Color", extract channels, save the red as Ha and average the green and blue from both filters (via Pixelmath) to yield O3.
In all of the cases described above, there is a result but the colors are different.
My questions are:
a) is there one approach that's better than the other - whether more reliable or more faithful in the results?
b) what is the standard way of processing the Optolong L-Synergy in APP?
Tks
Gil
Hi Gil,
I am not an APP expert but I believe the way to process the L-Synergy filter would be to run the extract OIII algorithm so you could combine that with the OIII from the L-Extreme filter. Since there is no extract SII algorithm, I think you just run the extract Ha algorithm. Because you collected SII and it's red like Ha, APP will extract it thinking it's Ha and make a monochrome image of the SII data. You can then combine the Ha, OIII and SII images for a final SHO image. That is how I would do it. If anyone else has a different process, let us know.
Thanks, Tom
Hello Tom,
Tks for the suggestion, I understand your approach.
What holds me back is whether APP's extract-Ha has sufficient latitude to reach 16nm upwards and also grab SII's wavelengths.
I wouldn't know just by looking at the results...
I don't think it matters for APP. It is just extracting the red signal and since the red signal with the L-Synergy is SII, that's what it will extract. I could be wrong but I think I have seen this technique described in other posts.
Tom
Holy smokes!
I just installed beta39 and it seems to answer all my questions: it replaces the old extract algorithms by new "Multi-NB" ones that cover all of my needs (H-a, SII, SII+OIII, etc.)!
Kudos to Mabula!!
Sounds good. I haven't downloaded that yet-waiting for the final 2.0 myself. Good luck.
Tom
Tks Tom,
Indeed, the red channel simply records whatever emission falls in its sensitivity curve. The filter defines the passbands, and the red channel happens to capture SII instead of Ha because of the filter’s design. Since Ha isn’t passed, the red channel contains SII instead.
I was wondering if APP models the filter transmission and camera QE to isolate SII vs OIII more precisely.
Gil
Hi Gilles @museceleste and Tom @tfergu01 & @timjburgess,
Indeed, beta39 has the new algorithms to extract all the different NarrowBand wavelenghts.
I was wondering if APP models the filter transmission and camera QE to isolate SII vs OIII more precisely.
No, it is just like Tom indicates, to get H-alpha or S-II we only need to grab the red channel. There is no need to model transmission and camera QE to achieve the proper extraction of the right data.
Mabula
