Want to photograph the Moon with your phone? The first photo I took of the Moon with my phone looked like someone had flicked a piece of rice at a black canvas. Tiny, overexposed, and deeply unimpressive. If you’ve ever pointed your phone at the Moon and been disappointed by the result, you’re not alone — it’s one of the most common frustrations in amateur astronomy.
But here’s the thing: with the right technique (and optionally, a cheap adapter to connect your phone to a telescope), you can get genuinely stunning Moon photos with the phone that’s already in your pocket. I’ve gone from “white blob” to “actual craters” in a few sessions, and this guide covers everything I learned along the way.
Phone-Only Moon Photos (No Telescope)
Let’s start with the simplest approach: just your phone, pointed at the Moon.
The problem: Your phone’s camera sees the Moon as a tiny bright light source surrounded by darkness. The auto-exposure tries to brighten the dark sky and overexposes the Moon into a featureless white disc. Auto-focus hunts for something to lock onto and usually fails.
The fix: Switch to your phone’s manual or “Pro” mode. On iPhones, this is available through third-party apps like NightCap or ProCamera. On most Android phones (Samsung, Google Pixel, etc.), it’s built into the camera app under “Pro” or “Manual” mode.
Once in manual mode, set the following:
ISO: As low as possible — 50 or 100. The Moon is bright, so you don’t need high sensitivity.
Shutter speed: Start around 1/125 to 1/250 of a second. This is fast enough to freeze the image and prevent the Moon’s brightness from blowing out the detail.
Focus: Tap on the Moon in your viewfinder to lock focus, then switch to manual focus if your app allows it. Auto-focus will constantly hunt and ruin your shots.
Zoom: Use your phone’s optical zoom if it has one (many modern phones have 3x or 5x optical). Avoid digital zoom — it just crops the image and adds nothing. If you only have digital zoom, take the photo wide and crop later in editing.
With these settings, you should get a Moon that actually shows some surface detail — particularly during gibbous or half phases when the terminator creates shadows across the craters. It won’t be telescope-quality, but it’ll be dramatically better than the auto-mode white blob.
Phone Through a Telescope (Afocal Method)
This is where things get exciting. Hold your phone’s camera up to the telescope eyepiece, and suddenly your phone has access to the telescope’s magnification and light-gathering power. The technique is called “afocal photography” and it’s been around since cameras existed.
The handheld approach: Look through the telescope eyepiece with your eye first and focus the image. Then, carefully hold your phone camera up to the eyepiece, centering the lens over the opening. You’ll see the Moon’s image on your phone screen surrounded by a dark circular vignette (the shadow of the eyepiece barrel). Centre the image, hold steady, and take several shots.
This is fiddly. Your hands shake, the phone slips, and you’ll take twenty photos to get one good one. But it works, and it costs nothing to try.
Use a lower-magnification eyepiece: A 25mm eyepiece gives a wider field of view and is much easier to align your phone with than a 10mm. You can always crop later. Higher magnification means a smaller sweet spot to hit and more vibration sensitivity.
Using a Smartphone Adapter (Recommended)
For about £10-15, you can buy a universal smartphone adapter that clamps your phone to the telescope eyepiece. This is the single best upgrade for phone astrophotography. Brands like Gosky, Celestron, and Solomark all make decent ones.
The adapter holds your phone steady and aligned, which eliminates the biggest problems with handheld shooting: shake and misalignment. You attach it to the eyepiece, slide your phone into the clamp, line up the camera lens with the eyepiece, and lock it in place. Then you can take photos (or video) without touching the phone at all — use a timer or voice command to trigger the shutter.
The improvement over handheld is dramatic. Where handheld gives you one usable shot in twenty, an adapter gives you consistent, sharp results shot after shot.
Camera Settings Through a Telescope
The settings change when you’re shooting through a telescope because the eyepiece is doing the focusing:
ISO: Keep it low — 50 to 200. The Moon is bright through a telescope and higher ISO just adds noise.
Shutter speed: Experiment between 1/60 and 1/250. Through a telescope, the image is magnified so vibrations are amplified. Faster shutter speeds freeze any shake.
Focus: Focus the telescope first by eye, then fine-tune while watching the phone screen. Tap to lock focus on the phone. If your phone keeps re-focusing, switch to manual focus mode.
Video mode: Here’s a trick many guides don’t mention — shoot a short video (30-60 seconds) instead of photos. You can later extract the sharpest individual frames, or stack multiple frames for a cleaner result. The atmosphere causes the image to shimmer and wobble, and in a video you capture moments where the seeing briefly steadies and the detail snaps into focus.
The Best Moon Phases for Photography
Counter-intuitively, a full Moon isn’t the best phase for photography. The light hits the surface straight-on, washing out the shadows that give craters their dramatic depth. It’s like photographing a landscape at noon — flat and featureless.
The first quarter and waxing gibbous phases are ideal. The terminator line creates long shadows that make craters, mountains, and valleys pop with three-dimensional detail. The contrast is dramatic and photogenic. Even a phone shot of the terminator region can look impressive.
Check the events calendar for upcoming Moon phases and plan your photography sessions around the first quarter.
Basic Editing (Free Apps)
A few quick edits can transform a decent phone shot into a genuinely impressive one. I use Snapseed (free, both platforms) for almost everything:
Crop: Trim the black vignette and centre the Moon. This immediately makes the image look more intentional.
Contrast and structure: Boost the contrast slightly (+15 to 25) and increase “structure” or “clarity” to bring out surface detail. Don’t overdo it — heavy processing looks worse than no processing.
Sharpening: A gentle sharpen can help, but aggressive sharpening creates ugly halos around craters. Less is more.
White balance: The Moon often comes out slightly warm (yellowish) through phone cameras. A small white balance shift toward blue gives a more natural lunar grey.
Three adjustments, two minutes of editing, and you’ve got a photo that’s genuinely worth sharing.
Common Mistakes I’ve Made (So You Don’t Have To)
Using too much magnification. A high-power eyepiece makes the image dimmer, shakier, and harder to focus. Start with 25mm and crop later. The results are better, I promise.
Forgetting to lock focus. Nothing worse than taking fifty photos and realising the phone was auto-focusing on the eyepiece barrel instead of the Moon.
Trying on a windy night. Wind vibrates the telescope and ruins sharpness. If the image is dancing on your phone screen, wait for a calmer night.
Only taking three photos. Take fifty. Atmospheric turbulence means some will be sharper than others, and you won’t know which until you review them on a bigger screen. Storage is free — overshoot wildly.
Expecting Hubble results. Your phone through a budget telescope won’t produce NASA-quality images. But it will produce images that are recognisably, unmistakably the Moon, with visible craters and detail, taken by you from your own garden. That’s remarkable, and worth celebrating.
NASA has a helpful smartphone astrophotography guide with additional tips and tricks.
What’s Next?
If you get hooked on lunar photography (and you might), the next steps are dedicated planetary cameras (from around £150), stacking software like PIPP and AutoStakkert (free), and shooting video to stack for much cleaner results. But that’s a guide for another day. For now, grab your phone, point it at the Moon, and see what happens. The results might surprise you.
Learning to photograph the Moon with a smartphone is easier than you think. Once you’ve managed to photograph the Moon with a smartphone successfully, you’ll want to try it every clear night.
Clear skies.
Daniel is a self-taught astronomy hobbyist based in the north of England. He writes honest telescope guides, gear reviews, and stargazing advice — and remembers what it's like to not know a refractor from a reflector.