How to capture the cosmos with your phone

The dancing northern lights, glow of the Milky Way, and motion of the stars used to only be photographed by professionals, snapping the otherworldly moments with thousands of dollars of camera equipment. But today, anyone can capture the cosmos with smartphones – with proper guidance.

Photographer Sadeq Hayati has taken more than 50,000 images of the dark sky from seven different countries with his Samsung phone. His work has appeared in Samsung’s marketing campaigns and won best mobile night photography awards. 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 leads smartphone nightscape trainings. “A device that is in everyone’s hands and 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.”

Here are Hayati’s tips for snapping stunning nightscapes with a mobile phone.

Setting up the shot

The phone: All modern phones have similar lens technology. Apple and Android phones can automatically shoot dark skies in JPG formats using a “night mode” setting.

More intrepid 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.

The settings: Under dark skies, the camera lens needs to take in more light. The shutter speed (how long the camera shutter is open) should be slower to allow more illumination –setting exposure times from 15 to 30 seconds. The ISO (how sensitive the lens is to light) should be high – around 1600 to 3200 – to increase the input of light. (Digital cameras also adjust the aperture, or how wide the camera lens remains open, but the aperture is fixed on most smartphones.)

Use the main lens (1x) on the camera for the best resolution and avoid digital zoom.

Additional equipment: Bring 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.

“The quality of night photos taken with a mobile phone is not as good as a professional camera, but it is important that the general public can experience it,” says Hayati. “Showing the night sky captured with mobile phone is very tangible for people and turns the night sky from an abstract to a real story involved in daily life.”

Capturing the northern lights

One of the most spectacular nighttime displays, the northern and southern lights undulate as green, purple, and red curtains across the sky. The display is 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.

“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.”

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 more than 3,000 shots 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.

His settings: ProMode, 8-second exposure, ISO 1600, 1x main wide lens.

Shooting the Milky Way

Under dark skies, smartphones can catch portions of our spiral Milky Way galaxy as a faint long band.

The Milky Way appears different 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.

“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.

In August 2025, Hayati photographed the Milky Way above the telescopes of Noema Observatory in the French Alps. The telescopes record faint emissions and light from other galaxies to study star formation and the early universe. Hayati chose this composition to contrast the tools that can see the sky – the telescopes collected data for scientists, but his mobile phone documented the stars for the public.

He 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 telescopes darker.

His settings: ProMode, 30 seconds exposure, ISO 1600, 1x main wide lens.

Snapping 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.

The motion of the stars can be captured by compiling continuous shots of the night sky. 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.

“Thanks to science and technology, this cosmicscape is returning to human windows and phone cameras are one of the main tools that reveal this perspective,” says Hayati.