How to take pictures of stars with an iPhone

Updated October 4, 2026 by Kamal Nasir

Put the iPhone on a tripod or another solid surface, aim it at a clear, dark sky away from city lights on a night when the Moon is down, and let Night mode take the picture with the capture time set to Max. Night mode turns on by itself in low light on iPhone 11 and later, and Apple says a tripod gives even more detailed Night mode photos. The Camera app has no separate astrophotography mode: Night mode on a steady phone is how an iPhone photographs the stars.

What you need

• An iPhone with Night mode. Apple lists it for iPhone 11 and later.
• A tripod with a phone mount, or a solid surface such as a wall, which Apple also suggests for Night mode.
• A clear night at a dark site. NASA suggests going at least 20 to 30 miles (about 30 to 50 kilometers) beyond city limits to see faint stars and the Milky Way.
• A headlamp with a red light. NASA and the National Park Service recommend red light because it does the least harm to your night vision.

Step by step in the Camera app

• Open Camera in Photo mode. In low light the Night mode icon at the top of the screen turns yellow, and a number beside it shows how many seconds the shot will take.
• Tap the Night mode control and choose Max on the slider, which Apple says extends the capture time. Your choice is kept for the next Night mode photo.
• Lock the focus: tap a bright star or a distant light, then touch and hold until AE/AF Lock appears. The National Park Service gives the same advice for night cameras: focus on a distant bright light.
• Start the shot with the 3, 5 or 10 second timer, or with Camera Remote on an Apple Watch, so pressing the button does not shake the phone.
• Keep still while the slider counts down to the end of the capture. If crosshairs appear, the iPhone has detected movement: line them up, or steady the mount.

Kamera Pro: LiDAR Night Vision

Night vision camera with a LiDAR lens

Get it on the App StoreAbout the app

When and where to go

Darkness matters more than the phone. Light pollution, stray light from towns scattered into the sky, hides faint stars, and NASA notes that under the most light-polluted city skies only the brightest stars and planets show. On the nine-level Bortle scale of sky brightness, NASA says a class 3 or 4 site is dark enough for a great night of stargazing, and a ridge of hills between you and a town blocks much of its glow.

Then check the Moon. For a week or so either side of full moon, moonlight washes out faint stars much as city lights do. The nights around new moon work better, when the Moon is absent all night, sets within a couple of hours after sunset, or rises only before dawn. Check for cloud, wind and wildfire smoke too.

For the Milky Way, check in a stargazing app where it will be, and pick a spot with open views and no town in that direction. Give your eyes half an hour or more to adjust, and keep the screen dim.

Why stars come out blurry, streaked or grainy

Check for movement first. Night mode can take several seconds to capture a photo, and Apple's advice is to hold the phone steady until the capture completes; a tripod, the timer and a locked focus take care of most of it.

Streaks come from the Earth turning: during a long enough exposure the stars stretch into short lines, which photographers call star trails. For cameras with manual settings, the National Park Service suggests starting with a shutter speed of 10 to 20 seconds and adjusting from there.

Grain and coloured specks in a black sky are noise, which grows as the camera's sensitivity (ISO) rises. The Park Service notes that it can make a dark sky look hazy, with what look like red dots.

Settings that help: RAW and exposure

On supported models, Apple ProRAW keeps more image data, which gives more room to adjust exposure, color and white balance when you edit; the files are larger. Turn it on in Settings, Camera, Formats, then tap JPEG or HEIC at the top of the Camera screen and choose RAW. The Park Service makes the same case for RAW on any camera: it holds more information than a JPEG, which gives you a better chance of lifting the shadows later.

You can also drag the exposure down next to the focus box, or use the Exposure control, to pull a washed-out sky back toward black. Apps with manual controls let you set the shutter speed and ISO yourself, which is how the Park Service's starting points are applied.

Night sky time-lapses

Night mode Time-lapse captures frames at longer intervals in low light. Apple lists it from the iPhone 12 onward and recommends a tripod: swipe to Time-lapse in Camera, mount the phone and tap the Shutter button. As the Earth turns, the stars drift across the frame in the finished video.

Using Kamera Pro for the night sky

Kamera Pro is a night vision camera app for iPhone with capture modes built for the dark: Night Photo, Light Trails, Night Timelapse and Astro, which takes stacked exposures of the night sky. It gives manual shutter, ISO, focus and white balance with focus peaking, captures RAW photos as DNG files, and has a Night Almanac with moonrise, the moon phase and tonight's darkest hour, which covers the planning step before you leave home.

Questions people ask

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