Wesley's Tool-Box

If you look towards the south around 9 to 10 PM in summer, Milky Way can be seen flowing down to the horizon... if you're lucky enough to be in a place with a dark sky. As someone living in a city, I have to rely on a camera's long exposure to catch a glimpse of it, like what I've done 9 years ago. Still, I wondered if iPhone's Night Mode can replicate this magic even after a decade of urbanization that took place here. As it turns out, the answer is a resounding "yes". A bit of post processing needed to be done to bring out the details, but the same can be said for the earlier photo as well.

All I had to do for the capture is to wait for a clear night sky, move to the edge of the city with fewer lights, set the phone on a tripod, and do a 30-second Night Mode exposure. Fortunately, the Liberation Day weekend provided the right atmospheric conditions, and the southern part of the city is still just full of rice fields after all these years. I was worried a bit about iPhone's finicky focus under low light, but it didn't cause a trouble this time.

In the end, I was able to take more than twenty consecutive photos of the Milky Way. Due to the ambient glow in the sky, the original photos still came out looking a bit washed out. But adjusting some settings like contrast and black point in Pixelmator Pro fixed that issue. If you want to see all the photos I took this day, take a look at this video.

Device: iPhone 16 Pro
Settings: 24mm equiv. - ISO 1250 - 30s - f/1.78
Time: 2025-08-15 22:08 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
Processed with Pixelmator Pro 3.7

What if you don't have a tripod handy? Well, you can do the Night Mode photography with bare hands and still capture the Milky Way, as you can see here. As a matter of fact, my first attempts were done this way. When I realized that a reasonably good quality can be had despite the relatively short (10 seconds) exposure and high ISO, I brought out the tripod later on. It's amazing what smartphones can do these days.

Device: iPhone 16 Pro
Settings: 24mm equiv. - ISO 2000 - 10s - f/1.78
Time: 2025-08-15 20:56 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
Processed with Pixelmator Pro 3.7

2024 has been a complicated year, especially towards the end. I hope the year 2025 will be able to resolve a lot of loose ends and make fresh starts. Here's a photo of the sunrise that I took from my home in Naju to calm you over. Happy new year, everyone!

If you want to see the sunrise as it happened in real-time, here's a video I uploaded.

Device: iPhone 16 Pro
Settings: 120 mm equiv. - ISO 40 - 1/3195s - f/2.8
Time: 2025-01-01 07:56 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

While many comets pass near the Earth every year, most of them don't get bright enough to be easily observable. The Tsuchinshan-Atlas (C/2023 A3) comet was an exception, and it was apparently bright enough to be spotted with naked eye in early October. But during that time the weather was either cloudy or rainy where I live, so nearly missed out on personally observing it.

Thankfully, patience and readiness paid off, and when the skies were cleared up for a few hours during the evening yesterday I got my iPhone 16 Pro out to take photos of the comet from the balcony. The best example of the observation is what you're seeing in the first photo.

Although the comet was no longer visible to the naked eye and there was plenty of light pollution from the city, the camera on the phone was still able to capture the comet with an 8-second exposure under Dark Mode. Marfik (Lambda Ophiuchi), a 3.8-magnitude star is right next to it, and the 4.3-magnitude Sigma Ophiuchi is below it, so you can gauge that the comet was at least as bright as a 3-magnitude star at the time. This is in line with my previous observations where the iPhone's wide-angle lens was good enough to capture a star as dim as magnitude 5.

Device: iPhone 16 Pro
Settings: 24mm equiv. - ISO 800 - 8s - f/1.78
Time: 2024-10-20 18:56 KST
Location: Naju, Korea