Top 3 reasons Astrophotographers take many hours of images

#astrophotography #astronomy #telescope
Astrophotography, especially when it involves capturing deep sky objects like galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters, is quite a fascinating and intricate hobby! The reason astrophotographers spend hours taking many exposures of the same object is primarily to overcome challenges related to light and detail.
Here are the top 3 reasons astrophotographers image deep sky objects for extended periods of time...
Combatting Dimness: Many of these celestial objects are incredibly dim. You know how on a dark night, it can take a while for your eyes to adjust and start picking out more stars? Cameras face a similar challenge, but they can 'soak up' light over a much longer period than our eyes. By taking long exposures and many of them, the camera sensor gathers more light, gradually revealing faint objects.
Reducing Noise: Digital cameras, particularly in low light, tend to produce "noise," which are random speckles of color that can obscure details. It's a bit like trying to listen to a faint radio station with lots of static. By taking multiple exposures and combining them (a process called "stacking"), astrophotographers can average out this noise, leaving a clearer, more detailed image.
Capturing Detail: The universe is packed with intricate details! Longer exposure time allow the camera to capture finer details of these distant objects, much like holding a magnifying glass up to something small. By stacking multiple long exposures, the final image can reveal structures and patterns in these celestial objects that are otherwise invisible, even to powerful telescopes.
Here's an example of the galaxy M81 with 6 hours of light collected.... and 12 hours... and finally 25 hours of light captured.
visibledark.ca/mylinks/
Music:
Discovery by Scott Buckley / scottbuckley
Creative Commons - CC-4

[@trishroyle9524]

Great video!

[@TomPeter-xn2ib]

I'm really liking your" snippets " they are very informative and your images are superb!! Keep em coming!!

[@gregmckay666]

Great video, Shawn. I am really enjoying your short, to-the-point, videos. This one is a perfect explanation for why we capture hours and hours of data. Especially the end with M81! I have to answer that question all the time. Now I'm going to bookmark your video and just share it with people the next time I'm asked.

[@Aerostar509]

I like to tell people that the light we gather is just a faint whisper and we have to listen over and over to hear it.

[@KnTGaming]

I tell people that we capture droplets in a bucket, and that we are very thirsty people haha

[@user-it4ry8fp5o]

I remember the good (?) ol’ days when an hour was a lot of time!

[@Steve_The_Ignorant_Astronomer]

Shawn , is that your m81 ? and that is real time in hours ??? Man that is a big difference.. You would think I would know this already ...... I usually do 3 hours on abject because i am impatience , guess I have to find some

[@VisibledarkAstro]

Yes that's my M81. I took it using a vixen VC200L and qhy168C camera!