Photo of the day | October 2024

.. an Autumn hydrangea with a lovely, delicate colouration ... a view caught during a morning walkabout of the courtyard here recently.

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Question for you photo enthusiasts. I’ve been playing with my iPhone 16 on a New Mexico vacation and taking night shots in Abiquiu. Incredible amount of stars even with the naked eye. Are these photos capturing actual astronomical structures (like a nebula) or is the phone doing some weird processing making the images look like that. Not a camera or astronomy expert myself. Hopefully they’ll upload in enough detail to see what I mean.

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Question for you photo enthusiasts. I’ve been playing with my iPhone 16 on a New Mexico vacation and taking night shots in Abiquiu. Incredible amount of stars even with the naked eye. Are these photos capturing actual astronomical structures (like a nebula) or is the phone doing some weird processing making the images look like that. Not a camera or astronomy expert myself. Hopefully they’ll upload in enough detail to see what I mean.

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Not sure about why it's picking up the colors but if you set it to a minimum of 3 second exposure at the highest exposure (hit the little arrow on the top middle to bring up these settings) you will get the best exposure possible for this situation. The key is holding it still, if you don't have a tripod try leaning it against something or setting it down at your optimal angle.
 
Are these photos capturing actual astronomical structures (like a nebula) or is the phone doing some weird processing …

Those are almost certainly atmospheric effects. Nebulae are nowhere near that scale, ever, and those images look very much like the aurora shots that so many of us took a while back. When it was at its peak, I could see whitish wraiths, but a 1s exposure would reveal color in what I was seeing. And there is always stuff you cannot see going on right up there.
 
Question for you photo enthusiasts. I’ve been playing with my iPhone 16 on a New Mexico vacation and taking night shots in Abiquiu. Incredible amount of stars even with the naked eye. Are these photos capturing actual astronomical structures (like a nebula) or is the phone doing some weird processing making the images look like that. Not a camera or astronomy expert myself. Hopefully they’ll upload in enough detail to see what I mean.
First, I'm very envious of you being in New Mexico: one of the best places to shoot stars!
Second: are you shooting RAW? RAW gives a lot more to tweak your shots, but probably you know this already
Third: I hope you don't mind I tried to adjust slightly the exposure that brings up some more details
If you have the original and you play with the exposure you should get a lot more out of it
and as suggested by Eric a longer exposure will help a lot with this kind of photos
Example of Nightscape Pictures
and https://telescopeguides.com/how-to-photograph-stars-with-iphone/

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one of my aurora shots looked like this, pushed after the fact

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That was near peak during the big storm. I could not see the color with my eyes, but it came out in the exposure. There is always some amount of solar wind activity in the atmosphere, and long exposures in a really dark sky will reveal it.
 
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