Pipeline changelog
Every version of NOVA's judgment, and the measurement that drove it. This is the AI's education, in public.
Autoprocess Workflow Changelog
Human-readable mirror of workflow_history.json (the machine source of truth). The current version is stamped into every run's run.log (workflow_version) and inherited by each saved critique, so the batch evaluation can group runs by the pipeline version that produced them.
Semver policy (scoring pipeline):
To bump: append a new entry to workflow_history.json (set current and add to versions), mirror it here, and record which critiques drove the change. Code reads the latest version automatically — no other edit needed.
Pinned engine versions (updated 2026-06-11)
| Engine | Version | Role | |--------|---------|------| | PixInsight Core | 1.9.3 Lockhart | plate solve, SPCC, StarXT/NoiseXT, register/drizzle, curves | | Siril | 1.4.3 (native siril-cli) | calibrate, register, seqplatesolve, stack | | SetiAstro Suite Pro | 1.18.0 (setiastrosuitepro, venv) | Image MM deconv stack, stat/GHS stretch, ADBE | | GraXpert | 3.0.2 Umbriel | AI background/gradient extraction | | ASTAP | CLI + D20 star DB (/opt/astap, installed 2026-07-02) | astropy-consistent plate solve at ingest; blind solve for hint-less/pre-EQ-spoofed headers; also unblocks SASpro's own solver |
SASpro 1.15.0 → 1.18.0 promoted 2026-06-11 via the canary protocol below: 1.8.0 re-baseline (M 51 / M 42 / M 13) → isolated-venv API check (all 21 pipeline-imported symbols present, signatures identical; abe_run gained a backward-compatible correction_mode kwarg) → live upgrade (zero dependency churn — numpy/numba/scipy/astropy unchanged) → canary check PASSED with all three golden finals bit-identical to baseline. Not a semver bump (no pipeline code changed). Laptop worker still on 1.15.0 until its next deploy. Unlocks for future feature work: NBExtract (1.17), SSSC (1.18), ADBE linear fix (1.16.3).
These are pinned pipeline dependencies, not apps to keep current: a minor update can silently change a headless process, property default, or behaviour with no error output (PI 1.9.3 DrizzleIntegration no-ops in automation mode; Siril 1.4.2 crashed on seqplatesolve, fixed in 1.4.3). Treat each version as part of the pipeline contract.
Update protocol (highest risk: PI > SASpro > Siril): 1. Re-process the golden targets (M 51 / M 42 / M 13) on the current engines so each target's latest run is fresh, then python -m nas_server.canary snapshot to freeze critiques/golden_baselines.json. 2. Install the new engine to a side-by-side path; keep the old binary for rollback. 3. Re-process the golden targets on the new engine. 4. python -m nas_server.canary check — diffs the new finals vs the snapshot and exits non-zero on drift. Promote only if it passes.
Updating an engine is not a semver bump on its own (these are environment state); bump only if pipeline *code* changes in response to the new engine.
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1.24.7 — 2026-07-20 (patch)
Stacker pre-EQ spoof fix — the 16-hour failure. The SH 2-298 LP restack failed catastrophically: 3717/3717 frames failed seqplatesolve over 8 hours, the fallback registration re-attempted platesolve and failed AGAIN over another 8 hours — 16 hours, zero output. Root cause: every individual sub's header carries the pre-EQ ALP location spoof (Dec off by 22° from catalog truth), so Siril's -radius=25 search fetches up to ~297k Gaia stars per frame trying to compensate — and still can't converge. stack_target() now compares one copied frame's header RA/DEC to the target's catalog position; on >3° mismatch it rewrites RA/DEC on every copied frame to the catalog truth before Siril ever runs. Validated on a 9-frame test set: 9/9 solved in 1.3s (catalog fetch collapsed to 2.3k stars). Extrapolated full run: ~9 minutes, not 16 hours.
1.24.6 (filter separation deploy, delayed) — now live
/stack?filter=auto|<name>|all (committed 2026-07-19, this restart is its first live deploy): groups qualifying frames by FILTER, stacks the dominant one by default, logs what was left out. Root fix for mixed-filter stacks like SH 2-298's original 6.6h-IRCUT-labeled/11.8h-LP-hidden blend.
1.24.6 — 2026-07-19 (patch)
Correction (credit: Henry — "framing mode doesn't change pixel scale"). The 1.24.4 "framing-mode 4.78″/px" conclusion was wrong: the SH 2-298 stack is native 2.39″/px. ASTAP's -fov is field height; the ladder computed width × scale, so the native rung failed and the solve landed only through coincidental arithmetic on a portrait crop. Ladder now uses NAXIS2 × scale. The fix that actually rescued SH 2-298 was 1.24.5's catalog override of the pre-EQ spoofed position.
1.24.5 — 2026-07-19 (patch)
Completes the 1.24.4 pre-solve: color_calibration now actually passes target= to spcc() (the catalog-hint block was silently gated on an empty string), and the catalog position overrides header RA/DEC on gross mismatch (>3°) — pre-EQ southern captures carry fake header coordinates (ALP location spoof); SH 2-298's Dec 2024 stack claimed Dec +9 for a Dec −13 target, so the scale ladder searched 15° around a lie.
1.24.4 — 2026-07-19 (patch)
SPCC ASTAP pre-solve: catalog position hint + scale ladder. SH 2-298 exposed SPCC failure mode #4: a WCS-less framing/mosaic-mode stack (~4.78"/px — twice native on the same 1080×1920 canvas). The pre-solve assumed native scale and found no solution in any search window. It now writes the target's catalog RA/Dec into the temp copy and tries FoV hints for all three S50 scales (2.39 / 4.78 / 1.19 "/px) before falling back blind — the right hint solved SH 2-298 in 1.3 s.
1.24.3 — 2026-07-18 (patch)
Small-target recenter crop is now WCS-first: center on the target's catalog RA/Dec projected through the crop-stage WCS (trustworthy since the ASTAP audit + 1.24.2 CRPIX fix), sized from the folio angular size × measured pixel scale. The brightest-extended-blob detector is demoted to fallback — a bright star's halo survives the median filter and can out-peak a low-surface-brightness galaxy, which cropped M 102 out of its own frame (the 3.5 run; caught by Henry's screenshot). WCS(hdr, naxis=2) required for 3-axis color headers with SIP.
1.24.2 — 2026-07-18 (patch)
Small-target recenter crop now shifts CRPIX with the crop. It copied the header verbatim — full-frame reference pixel on a 480px cutout — so every recentered target (folio <11') shipped a WCS pointing ~0.5° off-sky and SPCC queried Gaia at the wrong position: the second (fast-fail) SPCC mode. Explains the rescue-batch split: M 85/97/102 (recentered) still fell back after 1.24.0 fixed the PC-form mode for M 88/91/109.
1.24.1 — 2026-07-18 (patch)
Post-guard re-score fix: 1.24.0 replaced the final evaluator's scores with a physics re-grade when channel_crush_guard fired — physics grades on a different scale (M 109: a 7.2-class run recorded 6.5 with color_balance 1.0), breaking cross-run comparability. The evaluator's final_scores stay authoritative; the shipped-pixel physics grade now attaches as final_scores.post_guard_physics.
1.24.0 — 2026-07-18 (minor)
Batch eval 2026-07-16 fixes (M 85/88/91/97 galaxy regressions, 3 urgent issues).
spcc() now normalizes PC→CD on a temp copy (pure header
math, no re-solve); absent/insane WCS gets an ASTAP pre-solve instead.
Verified on M 88: SPCC OK in 26 s (was 2×150 s fail → fallback). A
keyword-level sanitize+reseed belt also landed in pi_postprocess.js.
_GAL_SKY_CEIL = 0.10, relative): therun.log's final
score describes the shipped pixels (root cause of the "final ≠
best_publishable / evaluator scored the wrong image" flag).
1.23.1 — 2026-07-17 (patch)
Instrumentation only (channel/episode Phase 1) — no pixel-path change.
_physics_pick_stretch now emits everyscored_out
out-param; the stretch_pick step_record stores them as candidate_scores.
skip_reason="hard_veto: <reason>" + veto_metrics instead of the generic
"no improvement".
Both land in run.log so the episode generator (make_episode.py) can render the 9-candidate grid and failure-beat shots from real data instead of re-measuring.
1.23.0 — 2026-07-15 (minor)
Small-target compositional recenter-crop (M 1 under-framed). The coverage crop only trims blank borders, so a target much smaller than the S50 frame ships as a speck (M 1 6' filled ~10% of a 77'x43' field; the processing was good at 7.0, the *framing* was poor). New _small_target_recenter_crop wraps the crop fn when the folio size < 11' (25% of the 43' short axis) and there's no saved/reviewed crop (a user's manual framing stays authoritative). It finds the target as the brightest extended (non-star) blob, measures its radius, and crops to 4.5x that radius centered on it, with a 240px native-res floor. Sizing from the measured blob is scale-free — necessary because drizzled finals (~1.19"/px) aren't inferable from frame dimensions. Triggers on M 1, M 57, M 76, M 27, M 97, NGC 6826, M 105, small galaxies; skips M 51 (11.2') and larger. Validated: M 1 Crab centered, 2032x3712 -> 784px, well-framed.
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1.22.2 — 2026-07-15 (patch)
Grain-DQ scoped to galaxies (SH 2-273 regression fix). The 1.21.0 grain disqualifier (bg_noise > 0.10 drops a candidate) was branch-neutral, but on faint nebulae the correct brighter stretch is *necessarily* grainier — the DQ killed it and left a conservative dark pick. Measured: SH 2-273 regressed 6.8 → 4.5 (DQ dropped stat_bright, dark ghs_soft won, "faint nebulosity almost entirely absent"). The galaxy branch needs the DQ (it ignores grain by design); the nebula branch already treats grain as a placement-equal tiebreaker — the right discipline for faint signal. Fix: apply the DQ only when is_galaxy. Validated: SH 2-273 → stat_bright (restores 6.8); M 108/NGC 4565 keep clean picks with veralux_strong still DQ'd. Caught by the reprocess campaign (1 of ~20 wave-1 reprocesses regressed).
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1.22.1 — 2026-07-14 (patch)
Frame-fill false-positive fix (M 1). M 1 — the 6' Crab remnant in a dense Taurus star field — triggered frame_fill=True (coverage 0.93); the smoothed "coverage" was unresolved stars + noise, not emission. The dark-anchor over-brightening then amplified a residual gradient into a broad green band (grader 3.2, "severe gradient contamination"). The pixel tests can't separate it — M 1 and IC 1805 both measure corner/floor = 1.04 pre-stretch. Fix: an angular-size gate — a target < 30' cannot fill the 43'×77' frame, so it's frame-fill-ineligible regardless of pixel coverage (folio size threaded from _folio_info). M 1 (7') ineligible; NGC 7000/IC 1805 still fire; unknown size falls through to pixels. Note: the horizontal bands Henry saw are in the SeeStar EAA live-stacks only — Siril sigma-clip rejection removes the satellite trails from the pipeline stack (verified clean, 3.1σ); the green band was created in processing, not inherited.
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1.22.0 — 2026-07-13 (minor)
Batch-eval HIGH fixes, Bump 2 (docs/plan_batch_eval_20260713_impl.md) + 07-07 carry-overs.
(G_p99 − max(R,B)_p99)/G_p99 > 0.06, cap G
toward max(R,B) inside the signal mask (bounded 0.6, never-invert machinery
shared with the sky pass). **Folio prior gate on the FIRST dominant_colors entry
only** — whole-list substring matching wrongly blocked NGC 281 and M 42 (secondary
OIII accents); Thor's Helmet's teal-dominant first entry correctly blocks.
Retro-validated: NGC 281 fires, NGC 2359 blocked, M 42 clear. The 07-07 pre-gate
half already exists (min_gr self-gate + max(R,B) cap postdate the v1.14.2 floods).
near_identity step record).
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1.21.0 — 2026-07-13 (minor)
Batch-eval CRITICAL fixes, Bump 1 (docs/plan_batch_eval_20260713_impl.md).
bg_noise > 0.10 drops a candidate beforemas;
every clean pick reproduces (2 apparent flips proven replay-depth artifacts).
band_lo − 0.005 (measured finals 0.031–0.045 vs
the 0.05 floor). Fixes the downstream crush, not the deliberately-bright 1.7.0
pick.
reduction_level capped at 2 on
sparse fields (<1000 stars — the level-3 sky-raise inversion). Unit-validated 7/7
against the measured failures from both evals.
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1.20.1 — 2026-07-12 (patch)
Frame-fill picker cost hole fix. The NGC 7000 live-proof run (20260712_175526) failed exactly where 1.20.0's cost was blind: a flat-grey stf won (dark floor 0.160 / p50 0.177 — tonal spread 0.017 vs the manual reference's 0.107), graded 4.2 post-stretch, final 2.5 with a non-degradation restore. Henry flagged it live. The 1.20.0 placement charged floor position + p50 brightness but not spread, so a contrastless wash scored best on both. New frame-fill placement term:
max(0, spread_target − (p50 − floor)), target 0.06–0.10 byA/B: 7/7 controls unchanged; NGC 7000 → stat_bright (spread 0.096); IC 1805 keeps its live mas (8.2); IC 1396/SH 2-273 reject clipped veralux variants for ghs_soft.
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1.20.0 — 2026-07-12 (minor)
Frame-fill detection — dark-anchor sky for frame-filling nebulae (docs/spec_frame_fill_detection.md). The IC 1805 pixel autopsy proved the manual 8.2 beats the pipeline's best 7.8 on midtone placement alone: manual p50 0.244 / corners 0.190 vs pipeline 0.075 / 0.068, with the same absolute grain, comparable saturation, and *higher* pipeline midscale contrast. On a frame-filling target the corners are faint nebula, not sky — so every corner-anchored mechanism (band charge, picker cost, clamp, feedback, grades) was muting the object. This is the hard-number proof of the faint-nebula-too-dark feedback.
_frame_fill_detect, once per run on the post-BGE pre-stretch starless):bg_level/bg_noise anchor on the darkest-percentile pixelsrun.log (top-level frame_fill + stretch step_record).
scripts/frame_fill_ab.py, real depth per the faithful-A/B protocol):---
1.19.0 — 2026-07-08 (minor)
narrowband_hoo — HOO-preserving palette step (Henry-requested alternative to narrowband_norm's Equalize/SHO look). Keeps Ha the dominant red; OIII a bounded blue/teal accent: R=Ha, G=0.15·Ha+0.9·O, B=O with O = min(OIII, oiii_cap·Ha). The local cap guarantees Ha dominance and forces O→0 where there's no Ha — auto-killing the field-flood a naive OIII surface produces on Ha-dominant fields (both RGB-proxy and raw xp_oiii flood ~half the frame without it). OIII from run_dir/xp_oiii.fit (Ha ref from xp_ha.fit at matched stretch) or an RGB blue-cyan-excess proxy. Knob: oiii_cap (0.6 near-pure-red … 1.0 max teal), soft/strong variants. Force via force_hoo; SCNR skipped on this path. Limitation: needs spatially-distinct OIII to show teal — on HII regions where OIII co-locates with Ha (IC 1805) the overlap reads gray; best for PNe / Veil / OIII-rich bicolor targets. Force-only, so no change to existing runs.
1.18.0 — 2026-07-07 (minor)
halo_suppression dense-field aliasing guard (batch-eval Pattern 1). On LP data with 16k+ stars the ratio-based colour subtraction flags nebula next to overlapping halos as "halo colour" and paints vivid magenta/cyan/green rings frame-wide — bg_noise +129/157 %, p99.9 pegged to ~1.0 on both v1.17.2 IC 1805 runs (these were the star rings mis-attributed to deconvolution during the session). Now hard-vetoed when post bg_noise > 1.5× pre or p99.9 jumps past 0.995 from < 0.98. No false-positive on the clean IC 1805/NGC 7000/M 42 runs.
1.17.3 — 2026-07-07 (patch)
Hard-veto honored in step acceptance. The 1.17.2 guard fired on both IC 1805 runs, but if new_sum > best_sum promoted the damaged output anyway — ringing *sharpens* stars, so the physics delta (+6.48) outvoted the objective FAIL and both finals shipped with the artifacts the guard had caught (magenta/cyan star rings, violet blob). The guard now sets hard_veto=True and best-result promotion skips hard-vetoed attempts. Normal marginal-case iteration unchanged.
1.17.2 — 2026-07-07 (patch)
BXT local-undershoot guard. On IC 1805, deconvolution dug large black holes with magenta rims into smooth nebula while whole-frame metrics *improved* (FWHM 2.59→2.14 px, SNR ×1.43) — the objective gate is structurally blind to local ringing; Henry caught it in the step preview. New _bxt_undershoot_check: 8 px cell grid, veto when a connected blob (≥40 cells) of output local minima drops below 0.5× the input's local floor. Calibrated on labeled pairs (fires on the 86-cell artifact run; quiet on clean IC 1805/M 42/NGC 7000). Veto keeps the pre-decon image.
1.17.1 — 2026-07-06 (patch)
pi_curves silent no-op fixed (critique-batch cross-run finding). _clean_curve_points merged any control point within 0.03 of x=0 *into* the [0,0] black anchor — on dark images (NBN sky ≈0.05 → point at x≈0.027) this destroyed the x=0 endpoint, PI rejected the whole curve (CurvesTransformation.K(): the instance is not valid), and the JS saved the input unchanged: bit-identical output, exit 0. Not a version regression — stats-triggered (curves input sky < ~0.06), made common by the darker LP/NBN path; the batch's 1.15.0→1.16.1 window was scheduling coincidence (curves worked in M 42/M 51 1.16.0 runs; measured no-op only in the two dark NGC 7000 runs). Fix: endpoints can no longer be merged away and are re-pinned post-clean. Verified PI-valid on the failing input.
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1.17.0 — 2026-07-06 (minor)
background_extraction frame-fill exception. On frame-filling nebulae (NGC 7000) every "sky" cell is nebula, so the sky-gradient metric wobbles without meaning — the gate vetoed GraXpert on a +0.014 move (0.062→0.076) even though it measurably fixed the real corner wash (TL 1.029→1.006 vs median) with no faint-structure loss (central IQR/med 0.112→0.126 — improved). Henry compared renders: "with background extraction looks better." New rule: a trivial absolute gradient move (<0.05) at low levels (<0.25) with SNR held (≥0.90×) is accepted — rejection requires evidence of harm, not metric noise. Big gradient jumps or SNR drops still veto.
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1.16.2 — 2026-07-05 (patch)
Mosaic-aware FoV for astap_solve(). The FoV hint is now derived from header geometry (NAXIS2 × scale, clamped 0.4–8°) instead of the fixed 1.3° single-panel default. Found on the first mosaic processed with the ingest solve on: NGC 7000's 60 MP mosaic solve FAILED silently → old WCS kept → XP matching stuck at 10 stars → NBN palette fell back to the approximation path (Ha amber/brown instead of red). The failing call now solves in 6.8 s. Single-panel stacks derive ≈ the old default — no behavior change for them.
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1.16.1 — 2026-07-04 (patch)
astap_ingest_solve default ON + golden re-baseline. F4 audit complete: golden trio (M 51 / M 42 / M 13) all scored 7.8 at 1.16.0 with 0 orientation flips and plate-solved crop positions exact to the saved boxes; M 13's 1.14.0 blue-corner-glow regression confirmed gone; Henry signed off 2026-07-04. Canary baselines re-frozen to the three 1.16.0 runs. Code default flipped False→True so nodes without the settings key (laptop worker) solve at ingest too — otherwise their Siril-convention WCS + the migrated (ASTAP-convention) crop boxes land ~36′ off (the round-5 failure mode). Deploy note: laptop picks this up on its next git pull.
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1.16.0 — 2026-07-04 (minor)
LP standard-chain colour routing (Henry: "PI CC look, keep it simple"). SSSC is spectrally faithful — but on dual-band data that renders the nebula green-teal (M 42 bright-nebula G/R: SSSC 1.21 vs PI CC 0.71 = the approved 8.2 look; SCNR can't trim it because the cast is green-*cyan*, G < (R+B)/2 pointwise). And SPCC's broadband white reference is wrong for dual-band — it only ever "worked" by failing into the PI CC fallback. Changes: 1. spcc() attempts SSSC only when allow_sssc=True — passed by the pipeline only for NBN/palette runs (narrowband_norm/nb_palette forced), the branch SSSC was built for (1.9.0). 2. On LP data the standard chain now skips SPCC entirely and goes straight to PI ColorCalibration with the .spcc_failed sentinel semantics (unlinked stretch + SCNR enabled) — the proven 8.2 recipe made explicit instead of failure-dependent.
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1.15.0 — 2026-07-03 (minor)
F4 colour-path completion (SSSC on LP/dual-band). Three coupled changes — items 1–2 shipped 2026-07-03 unbumped (discipline violation, corrected here): 1. xp_stars.measure_stars_rgb local-annulus photometry. The global SEP background can't follow bright structured Hα nebulosity at star scales, so embedded stars carried residual per-channel background that biased colour ratios and the solved SSSC gains (M 42: star R/G 0.30 vs SPCC's 1.49 — red crushed ~4×, the "green and brown" finals). Now subtracts a per-star local-annulus (2.5r–4r) residual per channel; stars drowned in nebula are dropped. Fixed gains physically sensible: R=1.756 G=1.0 B=1.098, Stage 3, RMS 0.25. 2. SSSC drizzle gate removed. The "drizzle photometry bias" was the nebulosity contamination above, fixed at root. Henry approved the fixed SSSC colour on drizzled M 42 vs SPCC side-by-side. 3. SCNR allowed when the calibrator was SSSC (.sssc_applied). SSSC solves star-based per-channel *gains* — it can't rebalance dual-band OIII emission landing in G, so the nebula body stays green through the linked stretch. Every good M 42 run (8.2, colour 7.5–7.8) had SCNR; all three SSSC-succeeded runs that skipped it scored 5.5–6.2 with "dominant green cast" as issue #1. PI-SPCC-success runs still skip SCNR (linked-WB protection); NBN/nb_palette runs still skip it (OIII/teal protection).
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1.14.2 — 2026-07-02 (patch)
Idle-worker per-sub solving: ASTAP-first. solve_subs_astap() copies each sub to tmp, solves there (~0.1–0.6 s measured; 4/4 on 10 s M 71 subs, scale 2.38″ ≈ native 2.37), and writes DB-only (solved_ra/dec/rot/scale) — library FITS are never modified (the ingest-solve lesson applied). Siril batch solve remains the automatic fallback. Unblocks the ~106k-sub backlog stalled on the offline laptop; pre-EQ-spoofed subs auto-blind-solve. PATCH — feeds alignment-outlier exclusion only, zero pipeline-output blast radius.
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1.14.1 — 2026-07-02 (patch)
Ingest ASTAP solve DISABLED by default (settings.astap_ingest_solve, default false). The golden rerun regressed (M 42 5.8 dim mids; M 13 6.2 new blue corner glow; M 51 fine at 8.2): Henry identified cropping as the failure mode, and the run videos show previews flip-flopping orientation between steps. Root: the corrected WCS changes what every downstream consumer computes — crop/canonical framing picked wrong regions (implicitly calibrated to the old convention), and PI steps re-solve internally, rewriting a WCS without the PLTSOLVD marker, so the renderer alternated flip rules step-to-step. Kept: D20 DB, astap_solve() (incl. blind mode), the SSSC sanity gate (green-cast protection), renderer marker logic. Reintroduction checklist: audit target_crop/crop_analysis/canonical_frame WCS usage; preserve/strip markers consistently through PI rewrites; verify preview-rule consistency across all steps; then golden validation. Lesson: validated components ≠ validated system.
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1.14.0 — 2026-07-02 (minor)
ASTAP re-solve at ingest — the root WCS fix. Siril/PI plate solutions are written in a convention astropy misreads (axis-inverted; drizzled stacks also offset), breaking every astropy consumer: SSSC/XP wrong-star matching (SH2-101 green cast), mirrored previews, drizzled XP no-op. Installed the ASTAP D20 star DB (/opt/astap); seti_astro.astap_solve() re-solves the working copy at ingest (~0.2 s), and the astropy-consistent header propagates through all steps (WCS-preservation now carries the PLTSOLVD marker; renderer uses the pure theoretical flip rule for those headers, legacy rule for old files).
Validated: SH2-101 XP matching 39/120-at-any-orientation → 119/120 identity vs 4–5 flipped; M 42 (drizzled+offset) 0–4 → 101/120 matches, true scale 1.1876″/px. Solve failure is non-fatal (1.13.2 sanity gate remains the backstop). Also unblocks SASpro's own ASTAP-first solver. (The Gaia XP libraries are *spectral* data — SASpro has no positional solver on them; its backends are ASTAP + astrometry.net web.)
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1.13.2 — 2026-07-02 (patch)
SSSC output sanity gate (SH2-101 green-cast post-mortem). Measured chain: stack signal G/R 1.43 → post-SSSC 3.01 (R halved) — SSSC injected the green; the stretch only revealed it. Cause: with the WCS axis/offset mismatch vs the data, the XP matcher pairs detected stars with wrong catalog stars; sparse fields fail closed (M 42 → SPCC fallback) but dense fields (Cygnus) pass the RMS gate with wrong-star colours → garbage gains. New gate in spcc(): signal-region G/R before/after SSSC; a move sharply away from neutral rejects SSSC (clears .sssc_applied) → legacy SPCC/CC fallback. Ingest-time WCS axis repair was prototyped (xp_stars.verify_and_repair_wcs) and rejected: XP matching is non-discriminating in dense fields (39/39/37/40 under all four orientations) and M 42 matches zero everywhere (translational offset, not a flip). PATCH.
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1.13.1 — 2026-07-01 (patch)
Fix 1.13.0 contrast-recovery regressions (found by the critique batch). Two bugs: (1) target_sky was 0.05 — below the nebula band floor 0.06 — so recovery *crushed* the sky (M 42 0.121-in-band → 0.050-crushed, faint-signal loss) and amplified grain (std/bg up to 1.24–2.13). Now targets the band floor + margin (~0.08) and only fires on a genuinely-soft sky (never darkens an already-in-band sky). (2) The body expansion blew the cores (M 42 Trapezium white mass, p99.9=1.0) — added highlight protection (identity above knee 0.80). Gain 1.2→1.15. Validated: M 42 sky 0.121→0.077 (in-band), contrast 0.171→0.193, sat 0.306→0.346, p99.9 0.973 (cores safe), 0% faint crush. The critique showed the two best batch runs (NGC 2244 8.5, M 31 8.4) were the ones where recovery did NOT fire — this retune stops it hurting the ones it touches. ⚠ Re-baseline golden M 42 (1.13.0 froze a crushed baseline).
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1.13.0 — 2026-06-30 (minor)
Sky-adaptive, signal-aware contrast recovery for nebulae (docs/spec_contrast_recovery.md). The 1.12.0 colour-first pick (mas) has a brighter sky that softens contrast (Henry: "vibrancy better but contrast less"). This downstream step — in the combine tail, where galaxies get sky_mute and nebulae were previously skipped — pulls the black point to darken the sky (M 42: 0.125→0.045) and expands contrast around the nebula-body midtone (body-pivoted, gain ×1.2 — Henry's blind-tuned sweet spot) with the faint floor (sky+3σ) protected (identity below it), so the faint Ha/OIII is not crushed (validated: 0.0% faint crushed, 0.2% blown; M 42 contrast 0.163→0.186, saturation 0.406→0.508). Hue-preserving (channels scaled by the luminance ratio). Note: an earlier floor-pivoted smoothstep was the wrong lever (barely moved contrast — steepened low-mids while compressing highlights); body-pivoted expansion is what delivers punch, and it's not depth-scaled (noise is below the protected floor → safe on thin stacks). Gated to bright-sky/soft picks (sky ≥ 0.08; no-op on dark stf-type). MINOR — gated downstream behaviour, scores comparable; nebula only.
⚠ Canary: changes nebula finals — re-baseline the golden nebula + sign-off; bundle with 1.12.0/1.12.1 on the next restart.
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1.12.1 — 2026-06-30 (patch)
WCS preservation extended to every step (preview-flip fix, round 2). 1.11.1 fixed only color_calibration, but PI-based steps (deconvolution/BXT, NXT, star_sharpen) *also* drop the astropy-readable WCS — so the preview renderer flips the image (the "preview flipped after deconvolution" Henry caught mid-run; confirmed: deconvolution output had NO WCS while color_calibration had it). The main step loop now re-injects the input WCS into any step output that lost it (generic), and bxt_deconvolve does it directly. Also covers forced steps (denoise_linear/star_sharpen/curves via PI bypass the main loop) and a final safety net (copies WCS from an early WCS-bearing intermediate onto final.fit if lost), so the final preview always renders orientation-consistent. Metadata only; pixels/canary unaffected. Metadata/preview only; scored pixels unchanged. PATCH.
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1.12.0 — 2026-06-30 (minor)
Narrow colour-swap in the nebula stretch picker — "maximise colour SUBJECT TO clean". The picker already honoured *clean* (it lands on the colourful-clean stat variants Henry likes) but never *reached* for colour when it was freely available — so it could ship a desaturated stretch (M 42 = stf) when a comparably-clean, more-colourful one (mas) existed. After the physics pick, it now SWAPS only to a candidate that is comparably clean (σ ≤ 1.2× the winner — grain stays a hard constraint; Henry consistently rejected grainy veralux even when more colourful), well placed, and meaningfully more saturated (mean signal sat ≥ winner + 0.05).
Grounded in measurement + 7 blind labels: colour is largely *irrecoverable* downstream (M 42 color_boost closed <30% of the stf→mas gap) while grain is a hard reject. The rule reproduces 6/7 blind labels and changes only M 42 (stf→mas), leaving the 5 correct picks untouched. Galaxy branch untouched (already mas-first). MINOR — changes stretch selection, not the scoring model.
⚠ Canary: M 42 is the golden nebula baseline — this flips its final (stf→mas). Needs a canary re-baseline + Henry sign-off after the full-pipeline confirmation run.
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1.11.2 — 2026-06-30 (patch)
Bounded mid-run stretch vision tiebreak — DEFAULT OFF pilot (settings.stretch_vision_tiebreak, default false). When enabled, the nebula stretch picker — on a *genuine close call* (top two variants share the same sky and exposure bucket, so grain alone separated them) — makes one cheap Haiku vision compare of the two previews and lets it break the tie. Any failure / physics-only mode keeps the physics pick. Targets exactly the aesthetic call physics is weakest at (the M 57 grain-vs-placement case) without re-scoring any step.
Default behaviour unchanged (flag off → zero API calls, identical picks). Uses a cheap vision API call, deliberately *not* the headless-skill mechanism (which is reserved for the deferred weekly batch-eval — see below — to avoid hot-path latency + Max-session-quota contention). This is the mid-run half of the critique feedback system; the deferred half is the new weekly /critique-batch-eval (meta-analysis of accumulated critiques → proposed physics-rule fixes, on the shared memory-tidy.timer).
To pilot: set stretch_vision_tiebreak: true, run a few nebula targets, compare finals + verify the tiebreak picks against the faithful harness, then decide on default. PATCH — opt-in, no default-run output change.
PILOT RESULT (2026-06-30): FAILED the bar — stays default-off. Phase 1 (scripts/stretch_tiebreak_phase1.py): 33% fire rate, 0% fallback, 3/4 disagreements → gates passed. Phase 2 (blind randomized stretch-preview A/B): 0 win / 1 tie / 1 loss — Henry preferred the physics pick on NGC 6334 (a thin stack, depth 0.00; the tiebreak chose grainier for "better sky", same failure mode as M 57). Not promoted; code stays as a harmless opt-in. The real fix remains the noted depth-aware grain refinement. See memory stretch-picker-ab-faithful.
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1.11.1 — 2026-06-29 (patch)
Preserve the celestial WCS through color_calibration (orientation fix). The PI color-cal path drops the astropy-readable WCS from its output; the preview renderer flips to north-up using the WCS (CDELT2 sign), so a WCS-less color-cal output renders vertically flipped vs the WCS-bearing background_extraction stage — the "image looks wrong after color calibration" bug (caught on M 42). M 42 hits it because it's drizzled (1.19"/px) → SSSC no-ops → PI SPCC/CC fallback (the WCS-dropping path).
Fix: _preserve_celestial_wcs(src, dst) re-injects the input WCS into the color-cal output when missing (no-op if a real WCS is present), called at all three spcc() success returns. Empirically verified: WCS-injected color-cal preview matches the bge preview as-is (corr 1.000) instead of flipud (1.000). Final scored pixels unchanged (WCS is header + preview); golden M 42 is drizzled so downstream xp/nb no-ops regardless. On native nebulae this restores a usable post-color-cal WCS (latent improvement — monitor). Takes effect on next seestar.service restart (deferred; M 42 canary + 9 requeues mid-run on old code).
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1.11.0 — 2026-06-29 (minor)
Nebula stretch-picker: separate sky-placement from highlight-health so grain actually breaks ties. The nebula _neb_key lumped under+blown (highlight health) into the same "placement" term as sky-band distance at 0.02 resolution. On faint LP nebulae the large, variable under term spread candidates across many buckets, so the grain tiebreaker never fired and the most aggressive/grainiest in-band stretch won (e.g. IC 1805 veralux_strong grain 0.808 beating stat 0.165 at equal sky placement).
New key: ([email protected], [email protected], grain, pref) — sky placement primary (Ha corners can't be pulled back downstream), highlight health a coarse secondary, grain the real tiebreaker.
Surfaced by the daily /critique-pending pass. VALIDATION CORRECTION (2026-06-30): the initial A/B harness used depth=1.0, which mispredicted picks on thin stacks (the picker's under term scales with integration depth) — only 1/9 matched live runs, so the original "7 cleaner / 2 grainier" numbers here were unsound. Re-validated with a FAITHFUL harness (scripts/stretch_picker_ab.py, now recomputes real depth via _stack_depth_factor and self-checks that the new-key replay reproduces each run's recorded pick). On the trustworthy (faith=OK, current-code) runs 1.11.0 is net-positive: 5 cleaner (NGC 6914 0.58→0.16, NGC 2244 0.40→0.14, IC 1396 0.53→0.27, SH2-101 0.14→0.08, NGC 7000 0.18→0.17), 1 grainier (M 57, a thin stack depth 0.29, where sky/health placement legitimately overrode grain), rest neutral. Golden M 42 pick unchanged (stf). Galaxy/globular branches untouched. MINOR — changes stretch selection, not the scoring model/steps. See memory stretch-picker-ab-faithful. Open refinement: depth-aware grain weighting so thin stacks don't pick a much-grainier variant.
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1.10.3 — 2026-06-29 (patch)
S50 plate scale corrected in image_analyzer.py (2.55 → 2.37 arcsec/px). The native SeeStar S50 plate scale is 2.37"/px (measured from plate-solved WCS on native M 13/M 51 stacks; physics: 2.9µm IMX462 px / 250mm FL ≈ 2.39; drizzle = 1.19"/px). psf_arcsec/psf_diameter (consumed by tool_params.py for BXT nonstellar PSF) is now ~7% smaller and more accurate.
Surfaced by the weekly memory-tidy pass, which flagged the plate scale as "wrong" based on a stale reference-s50-pixel-scale memory claiming 2.9"/px. Ground truth reversed that: 2.9 was the pixel size in microns, not the plate scale. agent.py's 2.4 was already correct; the memory was fixed.
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1.10.2 — 2026-06-29 (patch)
SyQon Prism Mini added as experiment variant for noise_reduction. Wires syqon_prism_denoise() in seti_astro.py — pure in-process numpy path via prism_denoise_rgb01(); no subprocess, no GUI objects needed. Model weights (376 MB) downloaded to ~/.local/share/SASpro/runtime/py312/models/syqon_denoise/prism_mini.pt from the SASpro 1.18 GitHub release. Smoke-tested on a synthetic 128×128 image (CPU, variant=free, output shape confirmed).
Two experiment variants registered in the ontology: prism_mini_gentle (strength=0.65) and prism_mini_standard (strength=0.85). Standard runs are unchanged — cc_denoise_inprocess (CosmicClarity) remains the seti_astro_fn default.
Parallax (SyQon's BXT/deconv replacement): the architecture in SASpro 1.18.0 is still a placeholder passthrough (_build_PlaceholderParallaxNet()) — no real weights can be integrated yet. The PI hold on BXT remains.
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1.10.1 — 2026-06-21 (patch)
SSSC registered as an experiment-only color_calibration variant. Phase C3 validation ran SSSC vs SPCC on five broadband stacks at the color-calibration stage:
| Target | Type | XP stars matched | SSSC ran? | Corner sky B/R (SPCC → SSSC) | |--------|------|------------------|-----------|------------------------------| | M 13 | globular | 84 (Stage 2) | yes | 1.012 → 1.003 | | NGC 188 | open cluster | 45 (Stage 1) | yes | 1.003 → 0.974 | | M 3 | globular | 31 (Stage 1) | yes | 0.960 → 0.988 | | M 51 | galaxy | 15 | no — SPCC fallback | — | | M 42 | emission nebula | 5 | no — SPCC fallback | — |
SSSC broadband only fires on star-rich fields (the ≥20 XP-match gate); galaxies and nebulae — the bulk of broadband targets — fall back to SPCC. Where it does run it ties SPCC's sky neutrality (~0.01–0.03), no improvement. So the **broadband default stays SPCC; the LP/dual-band default stays SSSC** (shipped 1.9.0, where SPCC's broadband white reference is physically wrong). SSSC is registered as a color_calibration experiment variant (cc_sssc, alongside cc_spcc/cc_pi/cc_none) so it can be A/B'd on star-rich targets, but it is not the broadband default.
Classified PATCH: experiment_variants are consumed only when a color_calibration experiment is explicitly run, so standard runs are byte-identical (canary: golden trio no drift). This is an additive optional capability, not a default flip — a future broadband flip to SSSC would be a separate MINOR + canary re-baseline. Henry chose "experiment only" 2026-06-21.
processing_ontology.json: color_calibration.experiment_variants added; step notecc_sssc.
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1.10.0 — 2026-06-13 (minor)
background_neutralize blue-cast fix. IC 1805's 1.9.0 final carried a measured dark-corner blue cast (sky B/R 1.26) that desaturated the Hα toward brownish-red. Two compounding bugs let it through:
1. Wrong measurement region. The completeness pass sampled the single auto_rect_50x50 patch. On frame-filling targets (the Heart fills the centre) that patch lands on an already-neutral spot, so the step was a no-op while the dark corners still carried the cast (IC 1805 corner B/R 1.25 survived). It now measures the four dark corners — the same region image_analyzer gates the step on — and subtracts the per-channel offset that drives each corner median onto the darkest channel's, neutralising the corner sky to grey. Verified: IC 1805 corner B/R 1.25→1.00, G/R 0.95→1.00 in all three pivot modes. 2. Colour step gated on gradient. _objective_check lumped background_neutralize with background_extraction and required a gradient drop (grad_drop > 0). A colour correction doesn't change the gradient, so when the gradient was already flat the step was always rejected (IC 1805 log: "gradient 1.000→1.000, 0% drop → rejected"). It now has its own branch gated on sky-cast improvement (cast_drop > 0.02, SNR hold). background_extraction keeps the gradient gate and the introduces-a-cast reject guard.
M51/M13 corners are already neutral post-SPCC (no-op), but **M42 carries a mild residual corner cast** (imbal 0.07–0.14; its neutralize was *skipped* in baseline) that the now-working step corrects — a deliberate improvement that shifts the M42 golden baseline. Hence a minor bump with a canary re-baseline (Henry chose the general scope over an IC-1805-only surgical fix); M42 before/after signed off before the new baseline is committed.
1.9.0 — 2026-06-12 (minor)
**NBExtract + SSSC — true narrowband workflow for LP dual-band data + spectrophotometric color calibration** (the two SASpro 1.18 flagship features, unblocked by the 2026-06-11 engine promotion and the Gaia XP spectral library install, 16 files / 62 GB, G<14).
The SeeStar "LP" filter is dual-narrowband (Hα 20nm + OIII 30nm), but until now the NBN branch only *approximated* channel separation (Hα≈R, OIII≈B via ha_dominance_ratio), and LP data had no valid color calibration — SPCC's broadband white reference is wrong for dual-band light.
Changes:
1. xp_stars.py (NEW) — shared Gaia-XP plumbing: SEP star detection → WCS px→sky → XP-library match (reprojected dist² < 9 px gate) → SASpro raw-aperture RGB photometry → spectra enrichment for both consumers. probe <fits> and --selftest CLI (synthetic mixing-matrix recovery corr 1.0; synthetic R(λ) solve RMS 0.0015). 2. NBExtract — xp_channel_extract (two-phase): the mixing matrix A is fit on the star-full post-color_calibration image, then NNLS-applied to the starless linear image at the stretch boundary, so the extracted xp_ha/xp_oiii channels are nebula-only. Fit deliberately happens after color calibration: SSSC rescales channels per-pixel, so fit and apply must see the same color domain. 3. nb_palette (NEW step + module) — composites the true channels into palettes: HOO, Foraxx (dynamic G mix), synthetic SHO (S = 0.8·Hα). Force-only aesthetic step with 4 experiment variants (nbp_hoo, nbp_foraxx, nbp_sho_gold, nbp_hoo_aggressive); never score-gated. Replaces the narrowband_norm approximation path when forced. - Black-sky compositing (required — Henry, 2026-06-12): each channel carries its OWN background pedestal (NNLS dumps the B-channel sky offset into OIII), so a shared blackpoint left a COLORED sky (navy/teal wash). The compositor now anchors per channel — low-percentile sky → 0 before the stretch, re-anchored to a small floor after — and solves the midtone from the signal high-percentile (→ 0.80), not the sky median (anchoring the median targets the sky, which both tinted the background and under-stretched the nebula). Synthetic bicolor proof: sky RGB = [0,0,0] with structure preserved. - Extreme-flux-ratio fallback (NB_PALETTE_MAX_FLUX_RATIO = 20): a bicolor palette needs a real OIII channel. On strongly Hα-dominant fields (IC 1805: ratio 157) NNLS correctly attributes ALL structure to Hα and leaves OIII a flat noise pedestal (contrast 0.89 vs Hα 3.06, no morphology) — compositing it can never produce a black sky. Above the threshold nb_palette is skipped and the proven narrowband_norm path (Hα≈R, OIII≈G/B + o3_boost) handles the field. nb_palette is for genuine bicolor targets (Rosette, Veil) only. 4. SSSC — sssc_calibrate — solves the camera system response from matched XP star spectra (SASpro Stages 1–3) and applies the Stage-2 quadratic gains. Real Bayer throughput curve shapes are mandatory — identity curves degenerate to a gray-world fit that forces R=G=B (found in design; selftest proves the corrected math). Broadband = SONY_COLOR_SENSOR_*-UVIRCUT; LP = SONY_CMOS_*-UVIRCUT × OPT. L-eNhance (closest published analogue to the SeeStar's internal dual-band). SessionResponseCache seeds each solve from the previous one (verified live: IC 1805 second run seeded from prior ctrl_points). Quality gate: applied-stage (Stage-2 sigma-clipped) RMS < 2.0 — mirrors SASpro's own prior-trust threshold; the headline residual_rms is the unclipped all-star value and is outlier-dominated on nebula-rich fields. 5. LP routing (new default) — color_calibration on LP data tries SSSC first; any failure falls through to the legacy PI SPCC/CC path unchanged. SSSC success writes .sssc_applied and counts as calibration success for the SCNR-skip and linked-stretch rules (preserve-linked-color holds). **Broadband SSSC ships experiment-only**: the M 13 side-by-side showed a green core shift vs SPCC's neutral — the default flip waits for C3 validation (separate bump + canary re-baseline). SSSC results are exempt from the whole-frame SNR objective gate (and get the lenient catastrophic-only stats-veto floor): the solved per-channel gains (k_R ≈ 2.26 on LP data) legitimately shift the SNR metric, which vetoed a correct calibration on the first live integration run (IC 1805, SNR×0.81 vs the 0.90 gate). The real quality check is the solver's applied-stage RMS < 2.0 gate, mirroring the crop precedent of not second-guessing a deliberate transform with whole-frame stats. 6. Latent gate bug fixed — LP detection now happens ONCE on the source stack header (_is_lp_run): the crop step strips FILTER from run-dir intermediates, so the old mid-pipeline header sniffs (xp hook, spcc_lp_filter param) would have silently no-opped on every real run.
Verified headless: xp_stars selftest; IC 1805 LP end-to-end (280 XP stars, Stage 3, applied RMS 0.888, 60 s, cache-seeded on rerun); M 13 broadband (84 stars, Stage 2, RMS 0.586, 6 s). Old-drizzle stacks (1.19″/px WCS/row-order mismatch) fail the star-match gate closed and no-op the XP machinery by design.
Critiques: none — feature work from the 2026-06-11 plan, not critique-driven.
1.8.0 — 2026-06-10 (minor)
NBN vibrancy restored: fix the silent revert of the nbn saturation pass. The 1.7.0 NBN runs on IC 1805 (5.8) and NGC 2244 (7.2) rendered steel-grey instead of the pathfound vibrant gold/teal SHO variants (IC_o3_1p5_sat / RO_o3_1p3_sat, trials 2026-06-08). The pathfound chain *did* run — narrowband_norm then color_boost preset=nbn — but the saturation pass was thrown away by two compounding bugs, with the step still logging "applied" (output bit-identical to input on both runs).
Root cause. NBN's step input was a non-float working copy, so the pi_postprocess.js "Ensure Float32" block fired — but it used SampleFormatConversion.To32Bit, which is 32-bit unsigned integer, so PI saved the NBN output as full-range uint32 (0..4.29e9). The nbn color_boost (the SOLE saturation pass — hoo_boost=0 by design) then ran correctly, but its midtone _lum_mask_blend computed the mask on the raw uint32 luminance: every pixel sat far above the 0.85 upper bound, the mask was 0 everywhere, and the blend replaced the boosted output with the original. NBN itself balances Hα/OIII to near-neutral (bright-region saturation 0.402 → 0.198), so losing the restore pass is exactly what produced the muted palette. (The earlier critiques mis-framed this as an NBN palette inversion — the SHO palette is the intended aesthetic; aesthetic steps are not score-gated.)
Changes: 1. pi_postprocess.js — ensure-float block: To32Bit → ToFloat (IEEE 32-bit float). 2. experiments.py _lum_mask_blend — min-max normalize original/processed to [0,1] when out of range before computing the mask and blending, so an integer-scaled input can never zero the mask again. 3. auto_process.py — the nbn color_boost preset is exempt from the midtone lum-mask blend: the pathfound look was generated unmasked, and the mask's upper bound (~0.85) would exclude the bright cores where the restored saturation matters most. Galaxy/nebula presets keep the mask. The skip is logged. 4. seti_astro.py narrowband_normalize — safety net: any non-float or out-of-range PI output is rewritten as normalized float32 before returning to the pipeline.
Critiques: 20260610_114522_seestar_nebula (IC 1805), 20260610_101238_seestar_nebula (NGC 2244) — both to be revised: palette intended, defect was the reverted saturation pass.
Also in 1.8.0 — the three approved 2026-06-10 critique recommendations:
5. hdr_core_blend — masked-core HDR blend (new step; M 42 + M 31 critiques). Global hdr_compression recovers the blown core but crushes faint signal — the "no improvement" objective veto fires and the step never lands. New seti_astro.hdr_core_blend runs the same compute_wavescale_hdr engine but blends it only under a feathered core luminance mask (M = gaussian(clip((gaussian(L,6)-thr)/(0.97-thr)), 20); thr 0.72 nebula / 0.80 galaxy, set from object_type). Blend is chroma-preserving (luminance-ratio), with a clipped-hue refill: above L≈0.78 the stored pixel ratios are already washed near-neutral (M 31 bulge measured R/G 1.00 at the center vs 1.06–1.10 at r≥100 px), so dimming alone reveals grey — chroma is refilled from the surrounding well-exposed region via normalized convolution (σ=100, weights = 1−clipness). Added to seestar_galaxy and seestar_nebula optional_nonlinear_steps (galaxy path previously had no HDR step at all); reuses the existing core-clip-fraction gate; exempt from the whole-frame stats veto (touches 0.15–0.9% of frame — same precedent as crop). Verified: M 42 wisp/dark-lane recovery matches the approved prototype; M 31 bulge dims to structure with warm hue held.
6. Folio-aware stretch pick (nebula branch) (M 42 critique). The 1.7.0 detail-first picker chose mas for M 42 with corner sky 0.122 — "in band" for the wide per-type emission range (0.06–0.16) but 42% over the folio's bg_level_range [0.05, 0.09]; cost −0.2. _physics_pick_stretch now takes folio_band and charges the distance outside the folio band into the nebula placement key. Galaxy branch unchanged (deliberately ignores sky; sky_mute_masked handles it). Verified on the M 42 run's 9 real variants: pick flips mas (0.122) → stf (0.050, in-band, lower grain).
7. sky_green_rebalance — sky-only masked green cap (new step; M 31 + M 42 critiques). The SPCC-success rule skips SCNR, so small residual sky greens go unpolished (M 31 sky G/R 1.12, M 42 1.06). New seti_astro.sky_green_rebalance neutralizes green only in a sigma-clipped sky mask, leaving object signal and SPCC star colors untouched. Design notes from testing: the cap is max(R,B) not the SCNR-style average (average inverted M 31's weak-blue sky to magenta, G/R 0.84), and the excess field is computed on σ=6-smoothed channels so the pointwise cap can't clamp just the high noise tail and drag the median below neutral. Added to both galaxy and nebula optional lists. Verified: sky G/R 1.045→1.012 (M 42), 1.061→1.010 (M 31); bright-region max diff ≤0.012. Full SCNR on SPCC data remains forbidden (IC 434 precedent).
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1.7.0 — 2026-06-10 (minor)
Galaxy workflow: detail-first stretch selection + masked sky mute. Henry's directive from the M 51 mas review: *"the key is to pick the good galaxy stretch and not worry about the sky."* Galaxy detail looked excellent on PI MaskedStretch (mas), but the picker could never choose it — and the downstream sky handling dimmed the very outskirts the good stretch preserved.
(1) Galaxy branch in the physics stretch picker. For object_type containing "galaxy", _physics_pick_stretch now ignores all sky terms (bg_dist, bg_noise, rel_grain, and the 1.6.0 grain-cap) — every one of them worked against the faint-preserving stretches: mas/veralux leave the sky high (big bg_dist) and the grain-cap cut them on sky-corner σ, crowning ghs_strong, which crushes faint arms and tidal bridges. Selection is now highlight health only (under + blown, bucketed 0.05) + the dead-channel reject, tie-broken by a faint-preserving preference order (mas > veralux_strong > veralux > stat_bright > stat > stf > ghs family). **Physics only — no Claude API call** (Henry's explicit constraint). Validated against an in-session vision ground truth on 4 galaxies: M 51 / M 81 / M 101 → mas, NGC 4565 → veralux family (its mas is nearly black; the health gate rejects it) — 4/4 reproduced offline. Nebula and non-galaxy branches unchanged.
(2) MAS output normalized to 0–1. PI MaskedStretch writes int32-scaled FITS (BITPIX=32, BZERO=2147483648, values to 4.27e9). Previews auto-normalize so it *looked* fine, but stats read p99≈2.8e9 — mas had never actually been selectable. _run_mas now divides by max (when max > 1.5), clips to 0–1, writes back float32 with BZERO/BSCALE/DATAMIN/DATAMAX stripped.
(3) sky_mute_masked replaces the flat sky mute on the galaxy path. The old _mute_sky scaled the whole frame down, dimming faint outskirts along with the sky. The new seti_astro.sky_mute_masked auto-tunes a luminance mask: σ-clipped sky estimate (5 iters, clip at med+2.5σ), smoothstep mask from sky+1.5σ → sky+5σ, gaussian feather (σ3), dilation blend to protect halo edges, then a black-point lift (bp = sky−1σ) darkens only the sky; the galaxy composites through untouched. M 51 test: sky 0.018 → 0.001, galaxy coverage 11.6%. Step record stays sky_mute; non-galaxy types keep the flat mute.
(4) color_boost — no change needed. The existing _lum_mask_blend midtone mask (lower = clamp(median×1.3, 0.08, 0.30), computed from the post-stretch image) already luminance-gates saturation: measured on mas M 51, mask lower 0.194 vs sky 0.149 — only the galaxy's ~10% of pixels receive the boost, so faint outskirts aren't chroma-amplified.
(5) color_boost delta smoothing — posterized color fix. Henry's zoomed M 51 report: "the color is too blotchy and abrupt." Stage-by-stage comparison localized it to color_boost: hue is noisy in faint regions, so the per-pixel hue-Gaussian delta flipped adjacent pixels between the +0.30 blue boost and the −0.05 yellow damp — a posterized orange/purple patchwork. The saturation delta field is now smoothed (gaussian_filter(σ=4)) before applying — luminance detail untouched, boost transitions spatially gradual. Verified on the M 51 mas stretch: speckle gone at σ4, blue arm boost preserved (σ2 leaves residual speckle, σ6 adds nothing).
(6) Manual crop editor apply fix. Both of Henry's manual crops (M 31 −17°, M 42 0°) landed misaligned: the editor preview is flipped vertically for north-up stacks (CDELT2 > 0) and Cropper.js reports x/y in the rotated bounding-canvas frame, but apply-crop mapped both straight into the unflipped/unrotated array. New target_crop.cropper_box_to_array un-rotates the canvas box center, un-flips the row, negates the rotation angle in array space, then scales to full resolution (main.review_apply_crop now uses it). Poisoned saved crops for M 31/M 42 cleared — both targets need a fresh manual crop + re-queue.
(7) Sky-only gradient metric — background_extraction was being wrongly rejected. On M 81, GraXpert flattened the sky *perfectly* (row-band span 0.00022 → 0.00003), yet the gate rejected it: the all-cells gradient metric is dominated by grid cells sitting on M 81/M 82, and SPCC's bg_anchor drops the denominator pedestal, so the metric read 0.176 → 0.248. The uncorrected gradient was then amplified 9× by the mas stretch into the hazy "green cast" top Henry flagged. New gradient_severity_sky (image_analyzer) measures flatness over the object-excluded bg cells only (M 81: 0.085 → 0.006 — correctly accepted); the BE/background_neutralize gate, the physics gradient score, and the generic post-step stats veto now prefer it (the veto was a second independent guard on the old metric — it reverted the M 81 GraXpert result even after the gate fix). M 81's weak sky mute (sky σ ±0.066) was a downstream symptom of the same uncorrected gradient.
(8) green_cap_masked — post-SPCC lime cast on galaxies. With the gradient fixed, M 81 still rendered yellow-green (grader: color_balance 3.5, "bulge should be warm golden/orange"). Trace: SPCC's linked white balance neutralises the sky perfectly but leaves the galaxy *signal* ~10% green-heavy on S50 OSC data (sky-subtracted galaxy G/R 1.04–1.12 post-SPCC; an Sab bulge should be ~0.9), and the mas stretch amplifies that into the lime wash. New green_cap_masked (seti_astro) runs on the linear starless layer right after star split, galaxies only: feathered luminance mask + sky-subtracted green cap G_sig → min(G_sig, (R_sig+B_sig)/2) at amount 0.7 (Henry's A/B pick: G/R 1.10 → 1.00, warm cream bulge with blue arm separation). The sky pedestal is byte-identical on output and star colors keep SPCC calibration, so the SPCC-success SCNR-skip rule (IC 434 sky-crush) is not violated. Self-gates — passes through unchanged when measured signal G/R ≤ 1.02.
(9) Hα/HII knot boost in the galaxy color_boost preset. Henry: "Are we able to boost the Ha signal more in the galaxy?" The galaxy preset only boosted blue (240°/280°) plus a tiny 10° red band, leaving the pink HII knots washed out next to the Reddit 42 h reference. Added a (340°, 25°, +0.22) pink-magenta saturation band plus an 8% red-channel lift where that band fires — computed on the *original* hue field with the same σ4 delta smoothing as the main boost, so it cannot re-introduce posterized edges. Henry's pick from the M 51 arm-zoom A/B (+0.22 + red lift).
Minor bump: gate/param tuning + an implementation swap on the existing sky_mute slot; no scoring step added/removed, scores remain comparable.
1.6.1 — 2026-06-09 (patch)
Three crop/queue bug fixes — no expected change to good-run output.
(3) A user-chosen crop was being discarded by the objective SNR veto. Henry asked "did it discard my crop?" for M 51 — its coverage edge-crop (no rotation) was force-applied by geometry, then the generic post-step stats-veto reverted it because whole-frame SNR dropped 102.7→59.0 (0.57, below the 0.85 guard), logging "crop — no improvement, skipped." Cropping reframes the image (different pixel population), so a before/after SNR comparison is meaningless. Per Henry's directive ("Don't veto crop. I am choosing it"), crop is now fully exempt from objective gating: _objective_check("crop") returns ok/improved=True, and the post-step stats-veto skips step_name == "crop". A crop chosen in the manual review is always applied — the pipeline never second-guesses framing with stats.
(1) Manual crop rotation left black corner wedges. Henry added a small rotation in the Cropper.js editor and the crop "wouldn't reset to a rectangle." The old apply-crop path cropped the axis-aligned box *first*, then scipy.ndimage.rotate(reshape=True, cval=0.0) rotated that box inside a larger canvas — leaving zero-filled triangular wedges in the corners. Fixed with rotate-then-crop: new target_crop.rotated_crop(data, cx, cy, cw, ch, rotate_deg) uses scipy.ndimage.affine_transform to inverse-map each output pixel into the rotated source, so the whole cw×ch box is filled with real pixels. Shared by the /review/{id}/apply-crop endpoint and the saved-crop fractional fallback (target_crop._apply_frac_crop). Rotation direction preserved (matches the prior scipy.ndimage.rotate(-rotate), Cropper.js +angle = CW; verified ≤1px). The WCS sky-box reuse path was already correct (folds rotation into PA), so this only touches the immediate winner FITS and the no-WCS fallback.
(2) Park-on-review didn't advance the queue. When M 31's crop review grace elapsed it parked (released its queue slot), but its auto_process thread kept holding PIPELINE_LOCK while blocked at crop_review ev.wait(). The worker popped the next target (M 51), which logged "starting" then stalled ~40 min on the lock until M 31 fully finished. Fix: PIPELINE_LOCK now tracks its owner thread (auto_process.mark_pipeline_lock_held / clear_pipeline_lock_held / release_pipeline_lock_for_park / reacquire_pipeline_lock_after_park); crop_review._await_decision releases the lock when a review parks and re-acquires it before resuming, so the next local job runs immediately while the idle parked review waits — real PI execution stays serialized. The laptop worker calls auto_process without the lock, so the release is owner-guarded (no-op there).
---
1.6.0 — 2026-06-08 (minor)
NBN vibrancy overhaul — real OIII boost on the HOO palette. Surfaced by Henry's investigation into why auto nbn runs (IC 1805, NGC 2244) came out muddy grey-tan instead of the vibrant blue-OIII / warm-Ha palette he gets by hand. Two latent no-op bugs were the cause: (1) the pipeline set nbn.normalizationMode, which does not exist in PI 1.9.3 — so o3Boost sat at its 1.0 default and the teal OIII core never surfaced; (2) the color_boost step ran with the galaxy preset because the standard param build reads ontology parameters while the key is actually params. Both fixed: o3Boost is now auto-scaled from Hα dominance and a dedicated warm-gold/teal nbn saturation preset is routed in. NBN is an aesthetic step and is not score-gated, so the scoring model is unchanged — 1.5.0 and 1.6.0 critiques remain comparable for non-nbn runs. Validated on IC 1805 (ratio 2.54 → o3Boost 1.50) and Rosette (2.16 → 1.35) trials matching Henry's reference image.
pi_postprocess.js): the NarrowbandNormalization block nownbn.palette=0 (HOO) and nbn.o3Boost=job.nbn_o3_boost (the real OIII-boost
property), dropping the dead nbn.normalizationMode assignment. o3Boost is the lever
that surfaces the teal-blue OIII core; left at 1.0 it produced muddy yellow-brown.
auto_process.py): narrowband_norm auto-scaleso3Boost = clamp(0.50 + 0.395·ha_dominance_ratio, 1.25, 1.7) — a more Hα-dominant
target gets more OIII boost to surface its weak teal core. Curve fitted to IC 1805
(2.54→1.50) and Rosette (2.16→1.35) visual sweet spots. Manual overrides
nbn_o3_soft(1.3)/nbn_o3_strong(1.7). Measured ratio + chosen boost logged per run.
seti_astro.py + auto_process.py + ontology): newnbn preset (gold/copper dust 35°/+0.40, amber bleed 18°/+0.22, teal OIII core
195°/+0.32, global_sat_lift 0.06) routed in explicitly whenever narrowband_norm is
forced — fixing the latent params/parameters key-mismatch that left nbn runs on
the galaxy preset. This is now the sole saturation pass for nbn; the in-JS HOO
ColorSaturation restore is disabled (hoo_boost=0) to avoid double/triple saturation.
nbn_o3_boost + nbn_hoo_boost throughpixinsight.run_postprocess; o3_boost + hoo_boost through
seti_astro.narrowband_normalize. The /narrowband_norm branch endpoint method=
now means auto (ratio-scaled) | soft (1.3) | strong (1.7) instead of the dead
MaximumStars/Equalize.
Stretch picker + crop review (folded into 1.6.0, no separate bump). Added in the same uncommitted, not-yet-run 1.6.0 window. Both are aesthetic/framing choices outside the score-gated model, so comparability is unaffected.
auto_process._physics_pick_stretch): for nebulakey = round((bg_dist+under+blown)/0.02)), and relative grain only
breaks ties within that bucket. Previously grain could win outright and select an
STF-overshoot variant that washed the sky bright. Galaxy/other types use the blended
cost plus the new grain-cap below.
auto_process._physics_pick_stretch): beforebg_noise + 0.25·rel_grain)
exceeds 1.5× the cleanest IN-BAND candidate's grain, then take the lowest cost among
survivors. Fixes the M 51 6/9 regression: veralux (grain 0.248) beat the cleaner
stat_bright (0.145) — both ON-TARGET sky — because veralux's brighter midtones lowered
its under-exposure term more than noise_w·bg_noise charged its grain; final noise
tanked to 5.5 and a non-degradation restore shipped an earlier checkpoint. Reference
grain comes from in-band candidates only, so a uniformly-grainy field (no clean in-band
option) is untouched. Opposite intent to the nebula change above (nebula corners hold
real Ha → de-weight grain; galaxies → discipline it). Critiques
20260609_021519_seestar_galaxy + 20260604_143439_seestar_galaxy.
crop_review.py)
presenting every crop_multi candidate (artifact-trim / canonical / coverage /
intersection / LIR), each with an STF preview, plus a Cropper.js editor to draw or
rotate a custom crop. The choice is persisted per target (target_crop.py /
target_crops table) as a WCS sky-box (center RA/Dec + on-sky size + PA, primary)
with fractional bounds + rotation as a no-WCS fallback, and reused on every later run
by reprojecting onto the saved box — identical framing every session regardless of
mosaic canvas growth. The old _claude_confirm_crop / _claude_crop_clips_subject
vision veto is deleted. The review honors the standard grace→park→wait queue pattern
(5-min grace, then releases the queue and waits indefinitely).
POST /target/{target}/clear-crop) so the next run re-opens
the review, and a per-run "Re-crop (force fresh crop review)" queue flag (re_crop on
/queue + the queue-view add-job checkbox) forces a one-off fresh review without
clearing the stored crop. Manual-crop geometry (incl. rotation) is persisted from the
apply-crop endpoint, which knows the exact applied box.
---
1.5.0 — 2026-06-07 (minor)
Alignment outliers are dropped from stacking. Surfaced by the IC 1805 panel-drop investigation: one pre-EQ sub (RA 69.98/DEC 20.27, ~50° off-pointing) was a spoofed-coordinate frame polluting the max-frame mosaic. Each sub's TRUE plate-solved sky position/rotation is now stored in the DB and an off-cluster sub is excluded at stack-selection time. Frame selection changes for off-pointing data; the scoring model and every processing step are unchanged — no scoring step added or removed — so 1.4.0 and 1.5.0 critiques remain comparable for well-pointed data.
light_files gains solved_ra/dec/rot/scale +solve_status (ok|failed|outlier|NULL) + solved_at. Populated three ways —
harvesting the WCS the stack pipeline already solves (near-zero cost), an
idle-worker eager-solve, and on-demand POST /solve/{target}. Keys
association/alignment QA on TRUE solved position instead of the spoofable/colliding
header OBJECT name.
sub_solver.flag_alignment_outliers): persolve_status='outlier'. Does NOT touch the manual exclude column.
stacker.py): subs with solve_status='outlier'qualifying_paths after the exptime filter, gated by setting
exclude_alignment_outliers (default true). An off-pointing sub no longer enters
registration/integration.
alignment_summary): per-group rot_median + rot_spreadsolved_rot, so subs rotated relative to each
other are inspectable. Informational only — alt-az field rotation is expected and
corrected by registration, so rotation does not auto-exclude.
---
1.4.0 — 2026-06-07 (minor)
A new artifact-trim crop candidate becomes the preferred crop. Surfaced by Henry's annotated review of IC 1805 (mosaic) and NGC 6334: the strict LIR clipped the subject on tilted mosaics, canonical over-sized bordered targets, and the existing coverage maps didn't even match the stack dimensions. The crop step is unchanged in identity and the scoring model is unchanged — no scoring step added or removed — so 1.3.0 and 1.4.0 critiques remain comparable.
crop_multi adds_artifact_trim_bounds — STF-stretches a luminance, then per edge scans inward and
trims while the band is anomalous by EITHER brightness (median below 0.55×plateau
= falloff/black band, or above plateau by 0.18 = residual gradient) OR
high-frequency noise (above 1.6× interior = grainy low-frame-coverage border).
Stops after a clean run, capped at 35% per edge, with a degenerate-box guard that
falls back to the full frame. Coverage-map-independent (works on linear stacks and
manual XISF masters). It keeps the FULL target while removing edge stacking
artifacts and is now chosen by default over canonical/LIR; canonical/coverage/lir
are still generated for the record and remain the fallback. Validated on IC 1805
master (full Heart kept, ~10% ragged bottom trimmed) and NGC 6334 (top 4% / bottom
25% / left 8% / right 13%). See [[feedback-crop-edge-artifacts]].
---
1.3.0 — 2026-06-07 (minor)
Four fixes from Henry's review of the 1.2.0 reprocess batch. Gate/threshold/param tuning plus one conditional step skip — the SCNR skip is gated on the SPCC-success path (mirrors the existing narrowband SCNR skip), the scoring model is unchanged, and no scoring step is added or removed, so 1.2.0 and 1.3.0 critiques remain comparable.
crop_multi enforces a native-resolution floormax(900px, 0.45 × native short)) and falls back to the largest-area
candidate when the chosen candidate (usually canonical, sized from folio angular size)
would downsample a small target below S50 resolution — fixes the ~76px M 57 / ~442px
M 109 thumbnails. See [[feedback-no-overcrop-s50]].
veralux_strong) overshoots above it, so the final sky lands in-band instead of
washed bright.
color_calibration applied and no .spcc_failed sentinel) because its non-linked
Average-Neutral green clip breaks SPCC's linked white balance and crushes the neutral
sky toward black (IC 434 / SH 2-273 R=0.0 / G=0.0019 "G/R=140" cast); SCNR still runs
when SPCC failed or never ran. A belt-and-suspenders _guard_channel_crush at final
save re-neutralises any residual coloured near-black pedestal left by a downstream step.
---
1.2.0 — 2026-06-07 (minor)
Eight further quality fixes from a second pass over the same 20-critique batch. Gate/threshold/param/default-fn/prompt tuning only — the deconvolution default swaps engine (cc_sharpen → BXT) but the step itself is unchanged, the scoring model is unchanged, and no scoring step is added or removed, so 1.1.0 and 1.2.0 critiques remain comparable. (Recommendation #7, post-GHS sky pull, was already implemented in 1.1.x; #10 two-path HDR is deferred as a separate MAJOR initiative.)
spread/bg > 0.40σ/bg > 0.18) instead of reverting on a marginal linear "no improvement"
(NGC 7635, SH 2-273).
bxt_deconvolve (fullcc_sharpen_inprocess remains the
automatic fallback when PixInsight is unavailable and an explicit experiment variant
(NGC 6914 star-ringing halos post-stretch).
FOCALLEN=250mm + XPIXSZ/YPIXSZ=2.9µm into manualreduction_level at 1 in dense star fieldsassess_stacked_image so the vision grader stops missing real sky colour casts
(NGC 2244 NBN blue cast B/R 1.46).
background_neutralize adds a residual-cast---
1.1.0 — 2026-06-07 (minor)
Seven quality fixes from the first critique batch (19 critiques, runs 2026-06-05/06). Gate/threshold/param/prompt tuning only — no scoring step added or removed and the scoring model is unchanged, so 1.0.0 and 1.1.0 critiques remain comparable.
lum≥0.98 ≥ 0.10%), not just a ≥1% top-decile fraction — recovers HDR on compact
blown cores like the M 42 Trapezium.
bg_noise/bg_level) tiebreaker,veralux_strong.
_objective_check now rejects a background step thatsky_b/r, sky_g/r) and flags residual cast for
a harder retry.
object_type from DB targets.type before theM 109 matching m 10 → globular).
ColorSaturation restore inpi_postprocess.js so genuine Hα/OIII signal isn't left muted grey-tan (measured
emission B/R 0.86–0.97 on M 42 / NGC 2244 NBN).
assess_stacked_image so it stops calling measured-correct backgrounds "too dark".
_data_integrity_flags surfaces wrong-field, pre-EQrun.log so a
run isn't graded for problems it didn't cause.
---
1.0.0 — 2026-06-05 (baseline)
First versioned reference point for the critique-driven iteration loop. No code changes — this establishes the line that subsequent runs are compared against.