Serious question, has anyone else noticed how phone pics are taking over deep-sky images?

When I started posting here back in 2019, almost everyone used a DSLR or a dedicated astro camera. Now I swear at least half the photos of nebulas and galaxies are taken with a phone, even the Orion Nebula shots I saw last week from a guy in Tucson. I get that phone tech has gotten better, but aren't we losing some detail by not using a real scope setup? Has anyone else noticed this shift or am I just being old school?

2 comments

2 Comments

elliot_king11d ago

Oh great, so @felix98 is telling us our phones are just fancy clip-ons now.

felix9811d ago

Actually, that Tucson guy's Orion shot was probably using a smartphone clamped to a telescope eyepiece, not just a handheld phone snap. In my experience, most folks posting those phone deep-sky images are using them as cameras attached to a real scope, so they're not really ditching traditional gear. Your mileage may vary, but I'd say the shift is more about phone sensors being good enough to replace dedicated astro cameras for brighter targets, not necessarily replacing the telescope itself. The detail loss is real on fainter stuff, but for Orion or the moon, modern phones can punch above their weight with some stacking software. Take this with a grain of salt, but I still see plenty of DSLR rigs on cloudy nights.