Our DSLR or Mirrorless Cameras offer us the option to save the photo we take in two different formats.
JPEG & RAW
JPEG is a compressed file format. The digital camera itself processes the image and compresses it.
RAW image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of the digital camera. Here we get the maximum amount of data without any compression and loss. No processing is done inside the camera.
The reason why we prefer RAW format in astrophotography is to get maximum detail from the milky way and other celestial objects while post-processing the photo. By prefering RAW we avoid loss of quality and keep the noise at a minimum.
For more in-depth knowledge of the subject and to learn about astrophotography post processing, we recommend that you take part in our Milky Way Astrophotography Post-Processing Course with Lightroom Classic.
A photo taken in RAW format. Before & After Processing