“How do you actually take a good moon picture with iphone?” wondered Redditor xLofty in a post three years ago.
The moon looks to most amateur photographers like a bright detail on a completely dark background, and it appears to be about half the width if one fingernail on an outstretched hand. That makes it tricky to shoot with an iPhone, as anyone who has ever tried it can attest.
But the top voted reply from user seoulitude had a clever hack: capture your photo while taking 4k video, allowing you easier and more granular control of the exposure, focus, and telephoto zoom (as opposed to digital zoom).
One of the Artemis II astronauts (it’s not yet clear which) has a better idea: simply go right up to the moon.
Artemis astronauts now sharing photos of the moon they have taken with their iPhones.
The lights are switched off on the spaceship so they can take photos better. pic.twitter.com/LEl5i9CH0c
— Scott Bryan (@scottygb) April 6, 2026
As I noted over the weekend, the Artemis astronauts’ suits were equipped with iPhones when they left on their NASA lunar flyby mission. Earlier on Monday, they ventured further from Earth than anyone has ever gone before, and then went a bit further as they reached the lunar neighborhood, roughly the midpoint of their ten-day journey.
But X user Scott Bryan caught the moment on the NASA live video stream when, with lunar canyons and craters tantalizingly visible, the astronauts showed off their unique iPhone moon photography opportunity.
It’s such an elegant photography trick. Why didn’t I think of it myself?
