Talk:Photon counting

Red links
I'm not sure I understand the presence of the red links in this article, which per wp:redlink imply that a new article is needed for each of them. I can't see how the topics are not already adequately explained by existing articles (without photon in front) or more appropriately by expanding existing articles where necessary. Beevil (talk) 09:22, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Photon irradiance, intensity, etc. are not covered in the articles Irradiance, Radiant intensity, etc. so changing the links to point there is not helpful. Whether the end solution is a new article or expanding an existing one, a red link is better than a link that points to an article that doesn't cover the topic. --Srleffler (talk) 07:13, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Surely though a link to article explaining the meaning of "flux" or "intensity" in general terms is more useful than a red link that leaves the terms completely unexplained. Beevil (talk) 17:30, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I restored the link to flux, which is relevant. The other articles are particular to radiometry (except intensity, which is a dab page). Other than the basic definition, which is already covered here, not much if any of the content in them is relevant to the photon quantities. You're probably right though that something is better than nothing, so I redirected the photon articles to the equivalent radiometry ones. That keeps the option of creating photon-counting specific articles in the future.--Srleffler (talk) 21:21, 11 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you, that seems like a good solution. Beevil (talk) 15:46, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Consumer / Professional astronomy photon counters
Do these exist as a image sensor / capture device that consumer, backyard, or professional astronomers can purchase for use with small scale terrestrial telescopes?

I’m not an expert with modern digital astronomy but it looks like the majority of backyard and terrestrial astronomy uses standard digital camera CCDs with a long exposure aperture that sums imaging data over a long period of time on the CCD array.

There been complaints by number of astronomers regarding low Earth orbit satellite constellations such as the SpaceX Starlink interfering with ground observation telescopes.

Certainly for a Long Exposure CCD there is no way to separate erroneous unwanted capture data from the desired data.

However using a much more sensitive photon counter image capture, it would be possible to characterize and keep the photon capture data as separate points during a long capture.

By performing temporal post-processing of the captured image data, software could remove unwanted photon data points that demonstrate the steady motion track of a satellite or airplane across the sensor area, as the astronomer attempts to capture faint celestial images.

— DMahalko (talk) 00:43, 30 June 2019 (UTC)


 * Photon flux in typical hobbyist telescopes would be too high for photon counting. You would get a higher SNR without using it.  I added a "disadvantages" section to the article to explain this in more detail.  98.10.205.66 (talk) 03:07, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Astrophysics applications
Astrophysics is listed as an application and the lead image shows a device used on telescope. There is no explanation of the purpose or how these devices are used in this application. ~Kvng (talk) 13:27, 16 August 2022 (UTC)