Hit 10,000 megapixels of deep sky data last night and it caught me off guard

I was just stacking frames for the Orion Nebula and realized I've crossed 10,000 megapixels of captured data across my last 3 projects - that's like 250 full moon shots combined into one image. Has anyone else hit a storage or exposure milestone that made you stop and actually think about what you're collecting?

3 comments

3 Comments

gavin2288d ago

Doesn't it kind of make you realize how much we just trust the process without stopping to look at the big picture? I hit 500 hours of total exposure time last month and it really hit me that we're basically building these huge invisible sculptures in the dark, one photon at a time. It's weirdly similar to how people accumulate miles on their car or steps on their phone, you know, you just keep adding until one day the number actually means something. Makes you wonder what else we're building without realizing it.

drew_jones318d ago

I heard somewhere that if you stacked all the photons from a full night's imaging session it literally wouldn't weigh enough to tip a scale, which is wild considering how much data we're sitting on.

the_susan8d ago

That 500 hour mark really makes you think. But here's what I wonder - do you think there's a point where the weight of those photons, even if it's technically zero, actually changes how you see the final image yourself? Like does your brain start assigning more value to it just because of the time sunk in?