No Posts in 2 Days? Here's a Picture!

Ben@beehaw.org to Space@beehaw.org – 215 points –

Here's a picture I took of the Milky Way with my phone. My telescope rig is out of commission until I get my new (used) observatory up and running. I need to install the dome rotator, but I'm waiting on a part to arrive before I can finish.

This is all I've got for now. I took this last weekend with my Pixel phone in astrophotography mode.

If you want to see my older images, I have quite a few posted on Astrobin here: https://www.astrobin.com/users/BensAstroStuff/

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What is the dashed line of at the bottom?

screenshot of original picture with orange box around line artifact at just right of center at bottom

That's an airplane traveling though as the exposure was happening.

Did not know the phones could do this! What’s your setup like? How long did the shutter need to be open for this?

I think this was ~4 minutes worth of exposure time. I took this with my Pixel phone and Google's astrophotography mode, which is part of the Night Sight setting. When the phone realizes it's completely still, like on a tripod, and it's looking at the sky, it gives you the option of taking pictures like this. It actually takes a lot of short exposures and stacks them. It's a very automated process, so there's not much tweaking to do. I do wish they gave the user more control.

The setup for this picture was just my Pixel 6 Pro on a tripod pointing up. :)

I've got a pixel 7 pro and I can immediately recognize pixel's astrophotography online. There's something about it that nothing else replicates

I have a pixel 7 pro and never used this feature. I'm going to give it a shot tonight! Disappointed I didn't try during peak meteor showers...

I managed to get out during a clearing in the thunderstorms! Got to see some real nice ones but wasn't able to catch any on camera unfortunately.

Make sure you set your camera app to capture in raw as well.

Very cool!

I wish he had less light pollution where I live.

Can you get Google's astrophotography mode on non pixel devices?

I think so, but I'm not sure how. I think some other phones are compatible and will 'just work' with Google's camera app. Others need some configuration with 3rd party software. I've never done it.