Darkening an iPhone Photo Reveals Many Stars – Amateur Astronomers Association

Figure 1 Star Chart used to name stars/planetary bodies observed in Orion Constellation on 3/19/23 in JHS Park 45, Bronx, NY

The iPhone can serve you well when you want to snap photos of celestial events and don’t have your equipment. The labels on the image above show additional stars that were invisible to the naked eye that became illuminated in the photo I took with the iPhone after adjusting the brightness, etc., of the photo.

Figure 2. The author used the constellation chart to name the various space bodies in the sky maps above. It is clear that there were more stars on 3/19/23 when the Orion nebula photo was taken. The above image shows a darkened sky with the stars/constellations circled in red.

Darkening allowed me to see that my phone captured more stars in the shot than what was visible to my naked eye. So, the next time you’re out on a clear night, take some photos and then edit out the light and see how many more stars you actually photographed but did not see with the naked eye. Have fun!