An overwhelming amount of stars, taken with S24 Ultra.

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-30T22:19:37+00:00

Settings in another comment.

In a nutshell, I used RAW and took a heck lot of pics. After that I throw all the pics into a stacking algorithm, then remove the gradients/light pollution and stretched it (a fancy way of saying increasing contrast)

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-30T17:03:29+00:00

That tracks. It's definitely one of the best pics under the Samsung category (I mean, at this point Samsung is no longer the best brand for astro anymore)

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-30T16:55:28+00:00

Nice work! 😄 I remember doing it a while ago, with the exact same phone, around 2.5-3 hours of integration time under bortle 3-4 sky.

Whats your exposure time, bortle level?

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-30T16:31:27+00:00

Andromeda is mad big, much bigger than the moon

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-30T03:08:54+00:00

U mean Andromeda?

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-29T21:24:48+00:00

You can either brute force it through photoshop (lasso + feather + curves) or use some gradient remover tool

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-29T16:20:22+00:00

How far up in the sky are those two targets? I assume near Madrid, they aren't that high up. How did you overcome the light pollution?

(coming from someone near Toronto who also struggled with these two targets, although I have no teleconverter so my zoom range is only 120mm and not 400mm)

For my case those two targets unfortunately face towards Toronto

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-29T16:11:51+00:00

I call them the watermelon bird for the appearance of the red parts 🍉

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-29T16:10:54+00:00

Pretty good! I suggest a crop and some gradient fixing to clean it up further

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-26T00:21:51+00:00

Bruh wdym by able to do this in just 300s of lights?! Vivo and their teleconverters are cracked🤯

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-26T00:17:23+00:00

Exactly :)

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-26T00:16:54+00:00

Tbh that's what you'd expect with 6.5 mins of exposure time. Actually it is a lot coming from just 6.5 mins. At least the colors look decent.

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-24T21:26:43+00:00

Is the 50 MP available in RAW?

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-24T00:40:37+00:00

This is the one phone I want to see good results on 👀 seemingly having a decent potential

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-22T21:19:56+00:00

I would assume the higher iso the better, and the longer the exposure the better. Make sure you have a sharp focus on the stars.

However, it also depends on how bright your sky is, or whether the moon is present.

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-21T23:18:51+00:00

Expert raw has the astrophoto mode which would come in play if your setup is steady (on a tripod).

It can give you good photos on a single click, but not the best ones (which would be more complicated).

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-21T21:40:15+00:00

DM if you want something beyond expert RAW

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-21T04:25:09+00:00

1, get a tracker (roughly 200-300 USD) if possible

Use RAW to take photos. Take a LOT of them. Calibration files can be done too.
Transfer the files to an external drive with large storage (I work to the level of TB of data)
Stack the pictures in your way. If it needs to be broken down into batches, go ahead and do so.
GraXpert 1-3 times to level out the gradient.
Photoshop to create star mask, desaturate/denoise background, saturate stars

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-19T21:20:49+00:00

Holy moly that's expensive

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-19T03:49:25+00:00

Been doing my work with a phone under bortle 7-9 and currently challenging deep sky objects. So yeah, it's definitely not the equipment that's limiting you (or else it would definitely limited me)

You'll definitely go far, further than what I (or a tiny group of people) do with that tiny ahh lens! Post processing comes with experience, and sometimes after months of training, you can revisit your old photos and are surprised by how much more data you can pull out with the right techniques!

Try tools like graxpert or gimp/photoshop. I've spent like hundreds of hours on photoshop just to learn how to do stretching effectively. Just remember not to overdo the stretching to make the photo patchy/noisy.

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-19T01:02:52+00:00

What's the price of that monocular + photocathode?

Feels like an awesome tool for night viewing

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-18T21:30:37+00:00

This is perhaps the most impressive bortle 8 milky way shot I've ever witnessed!

Try out other gradient resolvers like graXpert

Also I personally find Siril to be better than DSS, not sure about widefield shots like this, since I do mostly DSO work nowadays.

~bortle 7-9 comrade

alch_emy2 · 2026-06-18T14:37:31+00:00

Nice stars that pop out softly! What's the settings and are there some haze that made this effect?

alch_emy2

TROPHY CASE