Smartphone night vision images

GavStar · November 22, 2018

I’ve posted the majority of these images in my observing reports over the past 6 months or so but given the new section, I thought this would be a good opportunity to collate some of (what I think ?) are the better ones.

I’ve gone through three smartphones (iPhone 7, Samsung s9 and huawei p20 pro) and definitely my preferred is the huawei as it has a specialist mono lens and can do up to 30 seconds exposure (which is the maximum I need with my alt az tracking mounts)

I take these really as a personal record of my visual observations and I really don’t think I’m going to do ‘proper’ imaging. But I have really enjoyed taking these images.

The following were virtually all taken with my huawei, from an sqm 21.0 (apart from the crescent and eagle close up which were taken from London) with my pvs-14 night vision monoculars (either photonis 4g or harder digital intensifier tube), iso 50-100 and exposure times 20-30 seconds. Various scopes including tv85, Ap130gtx, TEC 160 and C11 and for the very widefield shots just the night vision monoculars on their own. These nebula shots use either a 6nm or 5nm h alpha filter. All shots are unprocessed (except for Eagle close up which I’ve processed really badly!)

Barnard’s Loop

Horsehead

Veil

Monkeyhead

North America and Pelican

North America and Pelican (closer up)

Lagoon and Trifid

Eagle and Swan

Eagle (close up with pillars of creation)

Crescent

Elephant’s Trunk

Cats paw

Cygnus

Flaming Star

Rosette

Pacman

California

Heart

JeremyS · November 22, 2018

These images are amazing @GavStar!

Stu · November 22, 2018

Yep, incredible seeing them all together like this, really amazing images.

melsmore · November 22, 2018

They're fantastic !

Mark at Beaufort · November 22, 2018

Fantastic images - all from a smartphone - brilliant

bish · November 22, 2018

Incredible images. Barnard's Loop is superb.

carastro · November 22, 2018

Amazing.

Jkulin · November 23, 2018

Very Impressive.?

AndyUK · November 24, 2018

I agree - These are seriously impressive results! :icon_salut:

Pete Presland · November 27, 2018

WOW, what an amazing set of images. You should send one to Huawei, they would be seriously impressed I think!

GavStar · February 4, 2019

Night vision doesn’t work as well on galaxies (or other broadband objects) but at the weekend I think I got some of the best visual views and phone images with my Celestron c11 with a 0.75 reduced, a 55mm plossl and my night vision monoculars unfiltered. I was using my huawei p20 pro phone with 8 second exposures unprocessed. It was a lot of fun and the c11 continues to surprise me with how well it works with night vision given the high f ratio. I have posted these images in the observing reports section but thought it would be good to post them in the phone imaging section as well in case some phone imagers don’t look at the observing forums.

Whirlpool (M51)