> I'm not an astronomer, but I am a photographer. Your experience with photography under ordinary lighting conditions is mostly irrelevant here. There are good

> I'm not an astronomer, but I am a photographer. Your experience with photography under ordinary lighting conditions is mostly irrelevant here. There are good reasons why serious astrophotography involves carefully calibrated tracking mounts and individual exposures lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes. > The fact that astronomers shoot these ridiculous shots showing insane streaks across their photos makes no sense. I could eliminate those trivially with a multi-exposure process for the types of photos being shown. Stacking multiple exposures is already standard procedure; single-exposure astrophotos are relatively rare. Total exposure time for faint deep sky objects is often measured in hours, with exposures sometimes collected over the course of several nights. Each exposure adds a bit of noise, however, which cannot be eliminated even with our best post-processing algorithms. For the same total exposure time the quality will be noticeable worse when using a larger number of short exposures vs. a smaller number of long exposures. Also, do not forget that there is more to astrophotography than merely making pretty pictures. The data is also used to measure brightness & composition (using filters for spectography) and to identify new objects, which are often very faint and easily overwhelmed by noise. The more post-processing you need to apply the harder it becomes to achieve scientifically significant results. I am not opposed to StarLink myself, but I do sympathize with the astronomer's concerns and hope that future improvements to the designs will mitigate the impact that the satellite constellations have on the scientific community—both amateur and professional.