How Google Pixel 4 captures astronomy

Note: Please read the article carefully before proceeding! If in the process of using you encounter any errors, such as broken download links, slow loading blog, or unable to access a certain page on the blog ... then please inform me here. Thanks!

From the first Google Pixel, Google has created an extremely high quality Android smartphone brand, with superior performance, algorithms, or even photography capabilities.
With a camera, the Pixel phones from the beginning to Pixel 3 XL have the ability to capture extremely impressive night, clear fonts with high detail, ... and easily reach the Top of the best camera of the year.
This year is no exception, and even more special when Google Pixel 4 is capable of capturing astronomy at night. So what is so good about astrophotography that makes this device so impressive? If you are interested, then let's go find out more in this article offline.
Read more:

#first. Capturing astronomy on Smartphone

The astrophotography here is not a photograph of the great journeys that you see through a telescope, so don't be mistaken.
The astrophotography we are referring to is taking pictures of the night sky with a normal point of view. So what's hot?

First: The phone is not like the human eye. The smartphone camera sensor is not large enough to receive enough light from the stars in the sky at night.
If you don't believe it, take your phone and take it into the sky. Even many machines can not see the moon in the picture anymore.
And of course, so far there is no smartphone that has hardware and customization good enough for astrophotography.
Next: An unexpected alternative to specialized equipment. To take such photos, you will need a specialized camera, very big and bulky. Naturally, a smartphone would be an unprecedented replacement for such a device.
In fact, when you try to customize your smartphone camera for astrophotography, you'll need to take exposure photos.
However, to get a picture that can see the stars and the moon, the exposure time takes up to a minute or more. Not many machines can do this. Along with that, the influence of the outside environment will also change the quality of the resulting image.
For example: If you only take exposure shots, because the earth rotates continuously, the night sky images you capture will be light trails. The stability of the shooting device position and the light source stability are similar
So how did Google solve the whole problem?

#2. How to do Google Pixel 4?

As I said above, they don't want their photos to capture light trails like normal smartphones on the market. Because simply doing so would not make any difference at all. So they added a new imaging algorithm to the cameras on Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL
To take an astrophotographic photo, Google Pixel 4 will need up to 4 minutes of exposure, but it is divided into 15 exposures, 16 seconds each time, and uses additional algorithms.
With the excess light points during exposure, the camera compares it to its surrounding color, in the same image, and compares the light spot in that position for all the remaining images.
If it is detected that excess light points are generated during the exposure, its brightness will be averaged by the brightness of the surrounding pixels. This makes the final image will be smoother, without redundant details, less noise
Autofocus in very low light environments: The camera will take 2 extra pictures to identify the subject for autofocus.
Due to astrophotography in an almost invisible environment, the camera will focus on a subject that it can detect in two additional images.
Conversely, if no subject is in focus, the machine will focus at infinity, which means that the resulting astrophotographic image will have uniform and accurate brightness between the stars, without paying attention to any other subject. like the moon or the trees ...
Astronomy photos from Google Pixel 4 are impressive. You can see a few pictures below.

# 3. Conclude

What does it look like, right? 😀 This is an additional algorithm of Night Sight mode on previous Google Pixel series, so Pixel 2 and 3 devices will soon be updated with this ability to capture astronomy.
What do you feel about the astrophotography of the Google Pixel 4? Please leave a comment below!

CTV: Nam Hoang - Blogchiasekienthuc.com

Note: Was this article helpful to you? Do not forget to rate the article, like and share it with your friends and relatives!