To most amateur photographers the Moon looks like a bright detail on a completely dark background, and appears to be about half its width if viewed with a fingernail stretched out. This makes it difficult to shoot with an iPhone, as anyone who has ever tried it can attest.
But user Seoulitude’s top-voted answer had a clever hack: Capture your photo while taking 4k video, giving you easier and more detailed control of exposure, focus, and telephoto zoom (as opposed to digital zoom).
One of the Artemis II astronauts (it’s not yet clear which one) has a better idea: go straight to the Moon.
Artemis astronauts are now sharing photos of the moon taken with their iPhones.
The lights on the spacecraft are turned off so they can take better photos. pic.twitter.com/LEl5i9CH0c
– Scott Bryan (@scottygb) 6 April 2026
As I noted over the weekend, when the Artemis astronauts set out on their NASA lunar flyby mission their suits were equipped with iPhones. Earlier on Monday, they passed farther from Earth than anyone had ever gone before, and then a little further and reached the neighborhood of the moon, roughly the midpoint of their ten-day journey.
But X user Scott Bryan captured the moment on a NASA live video stream, when lunar valleys and craters were clearly visible, showing the astronauts their unique iPhone moon photography opportunity.
This is a very beautiful photography trick. Why didn’t I think of it myself?
<a href