[masraum]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

You're not an astronomer.

Meaning, every second of time that an astronomer has under dark skies at a research telescope is valuable. They wait months or years for their 1, 2, *maybe* 3 nights at a scope, and every minute of dark time is accounted for. 10% of the images having a satellite flare across it would ruin a years worth of planning and grant funding.

Also, BIG scopes with BIG cameras are far more sensitive than your astro-rig, obviously. You might take 13 hours of one location, 5 minutes at a time and toss the bad 10%. They might take 10 minute exposures at 100 different locations in a night, so any that have a satellite might be an entire data point ruined.

Research imaging is a very different beast than astro-imaging. Variable stars, spectroscopy, occultations, all imaging runs that cannot afford to have a satellite scream across the chip flaring the CCD.

Great info for us regular folks.