Two and a half millimetres of light: a phone at the telescope eyepiece
A disc of light 2.5 mm across floats above the eyepiece, and the camera has to sit inside it. The arithmetic of scale, brightness and alignment.
Read →3SIGNUM: smartphone astrophotography
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Three cameras, and the phone does the choosing: which lens actually works after dark
The zoom button isn't wired to a lens. What really decides which sensor shoots, why it can change its mind halfway through a run, and how to take the wheel.
ISO is not a light switch: how much gain a dark sky actually needs
Gain is applied after the photons have been counted. What the ISO slider really changes, where analogue amplification stops, and how far to push it.
Four pixels into one: why twelve megapixels beat fifty after dark
Your phone adds its photosites up in fours before handing you a file. What that buys you, and why full resolution at night is a poisoned gift.
The streetlight changed colour: light pollution filters on a phone
The glass that cut the sodium lines arrives too late: LEDs light up the whole spectrum, and in front of a phone's wide angle a filter works crooked.
One degree per second: the Space Station with a phone
It arrives on schedule, crosses the sky in minutes and does not come back. How to plan, frame and blend an ISS pass with nothing but a smartphone.
Your phone sees the aurora before your eyes do
A grey cloud above the treeline that doesn't drift like a cloud. The sensor hands it back green: why that happens, how to forecast it, how long to expose.
