Professional astronomers don’t make discoveries by looking through an eyepiece like you might with a backyard telescope. Instead, they collect digital images in massive cameras attached to large telescopes.
Just as you might have an endless library of digital photos stored in your cellphone, many astronomers collect more photos than they would ever have the time to look at. Instead, astronomers like me look at some of the images, then build algorithms and later use computers to combine and analyze the rest.
