How to photograph the stars using your phone
Astrophotographer Sadeq Hayati spills his secrets to snapping stunning night sky images without a big, fancy camera.
The dancing northern lights, glow of the Milky Way, and motion of the stars were once the domain of only professional photographers, snapping the otherworldly moments with thousands of dollars of camera equipment. But today, anyone can capture the cosmos with smartphones—and proper guidance.
Photographer Sadeq Hayati has taken more than 50,000 images of the dark sky from seven different countries with his Samsung phone (a Galaxy S23 Ultra). His work has appeared in the company’s marketing campaigns and won awards for mobile night photography. Though trained on high-end digital cameras, he says mobile phones make the night sky accessible to more people.
“I believe that everyone should be able to observe and touch the vastness of the universe,” said Hayati, who also teaches classes on smartphone nightscape photography. Thanks to the devices in everyone’s pockets, astrophotography is making the cosmos more tangible than ever before. “With a few simple clicks, they can see, imagine and touch Carl Sagan’s concept of the ‘pale blue dot’ in the world they live in,” he says.
Here are Hayati’s tips for snapping stunning starscapes with a phone, as well as some suggestions that could help you capture specific night sky features.
How to set up the shot
All modern smartphones have similar lens technology. Apple and Android phones can automatically shoot dark skies in a digital image file format called a JPEG using a “night mode” setting.
But Android users may opt for manual “pro” mode and shoot in RAW files (selected through advanced camera settings). RAW files are unprocessed images and contain more data, allowing greater flexibility when editing colors, exposure, and other details afterwards. (Apple phones shoot in automatic mode, but these settings can be adjusted through third-party apps.)
Tweaking some advanced camera settings can also help. Under dark skies, the camera lens needs to take in more light to capture a clear image. The shutter speed or exposure time—basically how long the camera shutter is open, should be slower to allow more illumination. Ideally the setting should be on a slow shutter speed, between 15 to 30 seconds. The lens’ sensitivity to light, a setting called ISO, should be high—around 800 to 3200—to increase the input of light based on the scene. (Digital cameras also adjust the aperture, or how wide the camera lens remains open, but the aperture is fixed on smartphones.)
While it might seem tempting to zoom in, avoid digital zoom, and instead, use the main lens (set at 1x) on the camera for the best resolution.
In terms of other equipment, Hayati recommends bringing a tripod, a remote control for the shutter (or use a timer on the camera), a power supply, and possibly a red light to help see without ruining your night vision.
Even with these tips, learning night photography requires trial and error. Every scene needs adjustments, and no two pictures are the same.
(These are the best compact digital cameras for travel.)
How to capture the northern lights
Repetition is key to capturing one of our planet’s most spectacular nighttime displays: the northern and southern lights, which undulate as green, purple, and red curtains across the sky near the poles. These displays are the visible manifestation of energy transferring from the sun to Earth. Charged solar particles travel and accelerate along Earth’s magnetic field, where they excite gases in our upper atmosphere and cause them to glow. The lights can dance across the sky in seconds, making them difficult to capture clearly.
“When you want to capture the aurora, you cannot set the long exposure more than five seconds because it moves so fast,” says Hayati. “If you take more than five seconds, it goes loose [and] not sharp.”
(Chasing the northern lights? Here’s what to expect from forecasts.)
During a trip to Iceland in November 2024, Hayati placed his phone on a tripod between rocks to buffer against 90-kilometer-per-hour winds to shoot the radiant lights overhead. For the next two hours, he took around 700 photos on his phone in timelapse mode.
For any night scene, Hayati recommends taking five to 10 shots continuously and merging them in editing software—a technique called stacking—to improve image quality and decrease noise.
How to shoot the Milky Way
Under extremely dark skies devoid of light pollution, smartphones can catch portions of our spiral Milky Way galaxy as a faint long band.
“Galaxy shots need darker skies,” says Hayati. “You need to go more than 50 to 100 kilometers away to the desert, mountains, or some place” away from city lights.
The brightness of the galactic band varies depending on season. During winter, Earth faces a less dense spiral arm near the edge of the galaxy. The view shows a diffuse band of light, but very bright stars and nebulas—Orion, Pleiades, and Andromeda—are easily visible. Summer is “core season” because Earth faces the dense galactic core, making the Milky Way appear brighter. Hayati photographed the Milky above the horizon in Kyrgyzstan in the composite shot above from August 2023.
Hayati says a smartphone’s deep depth-of-field can keep both the foreground and background objects in focus much easier than a traditional digital camera. The contrast of the foreground and background objects can be further highlighted in post-production. Using computer software like Photoshop, he makes the galaxy lights brighter and the foreground objects darker.
(10 weird things you probably didn't know about the Milky Way)
How to snap star trails
Star trail photographs show the motion of the stars as Earth rotates. They appear as circles if the camera is pointed toward north or south or as straight lines when snapped east or west.
In your camera settings, “continuous shots” or “burst mode” can capture the night sky as stars move across it. Hayati recommends using third party apps – for instance, Apple’s “Even Longer” or Android’s “Intervalometer” – that can snap photos over an extended period. Choose the Milky Way or aurora setting and run the application for an hour to take at least 100 shots. The frames can be compiled in post-production to create the lines of motion.
Whether you’re capturing the northern lights, stars or another astronomical spectacle, these photography tips can help you appreciate our natural nightscapes with a new perspective.
“Showing the night sky captured with mobile phones is very tangible for people and turns the night sky from an abstract to a real story involved in daily life,” says Hayati. “It is amazing that today every person has a window into this universal perspective.”
