Frequently asked questions
Written for people who will check the answers.
Private beta with invitations sent by hand. Calibration, registration and integration are the settled part; the interface is still changing. There is no public download yet, and no fixed release schedule to promise you.
FITS and XISF are first-class for reading, and FITS is the working save format — linear pixels at full precision. Export is a separate step that writes TIFF, PNG or JPEG with the stretch you see baked into the pixels, because a screen stretch is display-only and a FITS saved after one still opens nearly black elsewhere. Camera raw files from Canon or Nikon are not read.
Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. There is no macOS or Linux build, and none is planned for the beta.
16 GB of RAM is a sensible floor. Integration holds each filter's frames in memory while it measures and aligns them, so very large sessions (around a hundred 60-megapixel frames in one filter) and large mosaics want more; the final combine reads from disk in chunks. No GPU is required and none is currently used: processing runs on the CPU.
No image data, ever — all processing is local and nothing is uploaded. The app does make network requests, and it is worth being precise rather than claiming "no cloud": signing in and checking your licence if you hold one, fetching the price list, release notes and plugin list from this site, downloading a Gaia catalogue so plate solving can then run entirely offline, and looking up a target name when you ask it to. Run reports (the run's log, settings and timings, never pixels or folder paths) go out only on your say: a release build asks first, the invitation-only beta sends them by default and tells you, and the switch is in Settings > Account > Run reports. There is no analytics or tracking beyond that.
Once, to turn it on: you sign in and the licence is checked. After that Pro works offline. The licence is renewed each time the app starts with a connection, and it needs one at least every 30 days. If 30 days pass without a check, Pro pauses until the app next starts online, and if the app has not been opened at all for 30 days it asks you to sign in again. The free features keep working throughout. A licence covers three devices at a time, and you can release one from Settings > Account > Devices.
Under %APPDATA%\AstrylStudio\, with a rotating log file in logs\. Help ▸ Export Diagnostics packages the logs and a crash report into a zip you can attach to a bug report — it is written locally, never uploaded, and deliberately leaves out your sign-in session and licence file.
By writing ordinary FITS with full headers, at whatever stage you want to hand off — calibrated, registered or integrated. Process logs are written next to the output. See Compatibility for the three arrangements people actually use.
The beta is free while it is a beta. Pricing is not being announced on this page yet.
Not answered here?
Ask it in the note attached to a beta request — the same message box, and it reaches the same place. Ask about using it.