Version 2024-11-09 fixed a major problem with analysing darks and flats

[cytan]

Hi Han,
Out of curiousity, what is the "major" problem that you fixed for analysing darks and flats? Does this affect my images from stacked and corrected subs with ASTAP prior to this version?

Thanks!

cytan

[han.k]

The problem was caused by an "floating/unspecified" astrometric solution variable causing a fatal error in the case of darks and flats. This variable is not used for darks or flats but was checked anyhow causing a runtime error. The variable value was random so depending on what was leftover in the memory location.

Resume, if ASTAP did not crash, the stack result are uneffected. So the fix is only to prevent the application crash.

So no need to redo stacking

Cheers, Han

[cytan]

Hi Han,
Thanks for your quick reply! I use ASTAP all the time for both plate solving and stacking. Thanks for clarifying the situation and you can hear my sigh of relief :)

You've certainly created a fantastic program for the astro community!

cytan

P.S. Just in case people are trying to install ASTAP.pkg on Sequoia 15.1, you can no longer right click on the package and override MacOS complaining about it being from an unknown developer. You'll need to go into System Settings->Privacy & Security and scroll to the bottom and select ASTAP.pkg to allow installation.

[han.k]

Thanks. I have update the brief installation instruction:

http://www.hnsky.org/astap.htm#macos_installation

I have only an old i5 mac for testing, so I do not notice these kind of changes.

cs Han

[cytan]

Hi Han,
You may want to update the Sequoia installation info from this link as well: https://sourceforge.net/projects/astap-program/files/macOS%20installer/

cytan