Why are photos from satellites almost always an assortment of different sized rectangles?

Question

I got curious after seeing some of the JWST images, and having been curious in the past about other images from other telescopes. It seems like there’s always a weird amount of corners, as opposed to just a regular picture from a camera…thanks for your help!!

In: 0

Answer 1

Satellite photos of earth tend to be composite images either because the satellite is too close to see more than what the box shows and/or it’s equipment wasnt designed to do large scale and/or the resolution desired required this approach.

This is also true even of probes like Cassini it takes multiple images that are then composited together later.