While lengthening the exposure time of each frame increases SNR and leads to cleaner pictures, it unfortunately introduces two problems. First, the default picture-taking mode on Pixel phones uses a zero-shutter-lag (ZSL) protocol, which intrinsically limits exposure time. As soon as you open the camera app, it begins capturing image frames and storing them in a circular buffer that constantly erases old frames to make room for new ones. When you press the shutter button, the camera sends the most recent 9 or 15 frames to our HDR+ or Super Res Zoom software. This means you capture exactly the moment you want — hence the name zero-shutter-lag. However, since we're displaying these same images on the screen to help you aim the camera, HDR+ limits exposures to at most 66ms no matter how dim the scene is, allowing our viewfinder to keep up a display rate of at least 15 frames per second. For dimmer scenes where longer exposures are necessary, Night Sight uses positive-shutter-lag (PSL), which waits until after you press the shutter button before it starts capturing images. Using PSL means you need to hold still for a short time after pressing the shutter, but it allows the use of longer exposures, thereby improving SNR at much lower brightness levels.

The second problem with increasing per-frame exposure time is motion blur, which might be due to handshake or to moving objects in the scene. Optical image stabilization (OIS), which is present on Pixel 2 and 3, reduces handshake for moderate exposure times (up to about 1/8 second), but doesn’t help with longer exposures or with moving objects. To combat motion blur that OIS can’t fix, the Pixel 3’s default picture-taking mode uses “motion metering”, which consists of using optical flow to measure recent scene motion and choosing an exposure time that minimizes this blur. Pixel 1 and 2 don’t use motion metering in their default mode, but all three phones use the technique in Night Sight mode, increasing per-frame exposure time up to 333ms if there isn't much motion. For Pixel 1, which has no OIS, we increase exposure time less (for the selfie cameras, which also don't have OIS, we increase it even less). If the camera is being stabilized (held against a wall, or using a tripod, for example), the exposure of each frame is increased to as much as one second. In addition to varying per-frame exposure, we also vary the number of frames we capture, 6 if the phone is on a tripod and up to 15 if it is handheld. These frame limits prevent user fatigue (and the need for a cancel button). Thus, depending on which Pixel phone you have, camera selection, handshake, scene motion and scene brightness, Night Sight captures 15 frames of 1/15 second (or less) each, or 6 frames of 1 second each, or anything in between.

https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/11/night-sight-seeing-in-dark-on-pixel.html