I was at the the beach this past week, and one of the days we got a chance to do some star gazing. It was a new moon, and the sky was full of stars (and some satellites). I wanted to take a picture to capture the majesty. In the past, I’ve tried to take pictures of the stars and have failed, but recently I’ve been getting better at manual mode on my Galaxy S9, so I tried again. This time it worked! Here was the result:

There were a couple of settings that made the picture possible. With manual mode, I set the focus to infinity so the stars would be resolved. I fully opened the aperture to let in more light, and I set the phone down on a box so that it did not move. When it was taking the picture, the phone automatically determined the exposure time which ended up being around 10 seconds. I also raised the ISO level, but that may not have been the best idea because it can introduce noise. If you’re interested in learning more, there are many guides available, I came across this one today and found it to be informative.

Good luck with your astrophotography! Here’s a picture of the big dipper to close: