Modern mobiles are now able to take quite striking images of the night sky.

Here’s a few examples people shared from last night’s aurora activity in the north of Scotland.

If you’d like to try it yourself I’ve outlined a few pointers below and some apps you could try.

Settings:

1. Find the ‘manual’ or ‘pro’ setting on your mobile phone, this should let you alter ISO, focus and exposure settings.

2. Boost the ISO to around 800 or higher if you mobile is a more recent model.

3. Alter the exposure time to between 3 seconds – 30 seconds and experiment with a few shots.

4. WIth a short exposure time (a few seconds) you might get away with a handheld shot assuming you can keep you phone still during the picture. Any longer and you’ll need a tripod mount.

5. Good luck.

Phone Apps:

If you’re looking for some apps specifically designed to take astronomy images you could try NightCap (iPhone only) or ProCamX (Android). And if you want to get really experimental there’s also DeepSkyCamera which attempts to stack images for deep sky images (tripod essential).

Good luck and have fun.