> Much of the time was spent painstakingly erasing stars, to reveal the satellites.

Many more stars than satellites in every frame. Erasing a couple satellites at most is quick. Erasing every star in the sky and keeping a couple satellites is not.

- Astronomers have automated software that anticipates each streak based on the space object catalog and automatically removes satellites from long-exposure wide field-of-view images.

- Those whose job is to track satellites and update the space object catalog have software that anticipates each star location based on star catalogs, and automatically removes stars so they can see where the satellites are.

You're just pointing out that there are tools to automate this.

It’s ironic because stars outnumber visible satellites by a lot, so exiting out the stars is a lot more work than the satellites.