I have been using AA since version 3, through versions 5, 6 and finally 8 for calibration of tens of thousands of images and the related data reduction. My research consists in monitoring blazars within the consortium of observatories called WEBT (Whole Earth Blazar Telescope) https://www.oato.inaf.it/blazars/webt/introduction/
For the photometry of this multitude of images I used a specific program created in Perl which uses a specific AstroArt patch called "Batch save stars" created specifically for me by Fabio. This patch produces a .sta file for each fits file where the comparison star data necessary for the differential photometry (used to calculate the magnitude of the Blarzars of the WEBT list) are saved.
These datasets are then used together with those of the other observatories of the WEBT consortium and over the last 25 years with the contribution of my data dozens and dozens of publications have been produced in the most important international scientific journals. One of the most notable publications was in 2017, Nature 552, 374 and an other in 2022 in Nature 609, 265.
Links:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05038-9
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature24623