The Milky Way on your phone: the complete guide to getting started
When to see the Milky Way, where to find dark skies and how to shoot it with your phone: tripod, settings, live stacking and honest expectations.
Read →SIGNUM: smartphone astrophotography
The night is full of signal,
the noise is only a veil;
we stack the light until it speaks
Astrophotography, gear and the night sky, with the occasional nerdy detour. This is the journal of AstroStackerPro, the app that pulls signal out of noise: we do the same thing here, in writing. Read the pact.
Opening
all articlesThen
Live stacking explained: why 600 shots beat one long exposure
Why your phone cannot hold the shutter open, and how 600 short exposures, aligned and averaged, pull the sky out of the noise. No heavy math.
Seven mistakes everyone makes when they first point a phone at the night sky
Tripod, digital zoom, auto ISO, the wrong night out: the seven mistakes almost all of us make in our first sky photos with a phone, and how to avoid them.
The Moon with your phone: a practical guide
Exposure, phases, terminator, zoom, tripod and stacking: how to photograph the Moon with a smartphone without turning it into a burnt white dot.
The Bortle scale: how dark is your sky, really
Nine classes to measure darkness, from downtown to a mountain pass: how to read your own sky with the naked eye and what to expect when shooting with a phone.
The minimal gear you need to photograph the sky with your phone
Tripod, clamp and little else: what you actually need to photograph the sky with a phone, what costs nothing, and what can stay in the cart.
600frames stacked into one image
THE APP
AstroStackerPro: the sky, from your phone
Live stacking up to 600 frames, sky recognition, noise reduction and zero tracking: all on iPhone. SIGNUM is its logbook.
KILLBIT DOSSIER · 2017–2018 · 🔒
For now, the files are classified
The old KillBit archive exists: 81 documents, recovered and preserved. But the committee has applied the seals, and the curator hasn't signed the clearance yet. Check back: sooner or later somebody will lose the key.