Well I suppose this is a bit of a misstatement. Google pixel phones have for the last couple of iterations had a feature called astrophotography mode.

I’m not versed enough to describe all the technicalities, Pat. It basically uses the digital camera sensor and the optical lenses and its own “smart” software to do all the leg work that you could otherwise do just by long exposure, photography, photo stacking, and rendering.

When you point the phone at the sky it goes into night mode, which is just long exposure photography. Sensor detects that you’re looking at stars, and you are holding the phone still, such as by placing it on a table upside down or on a tripod, it will detect that you’re trying to photograph the Stars, flip to astrophotography mode, and then take a 4-minute exposure, which I think also may make use of GPS and the electromagnetic field sensor to help you capture the image of the Stars.

I have found that it works well for a wide shot of a comment and for wide field shots of the night sky.

It absolutely cannot do deep sky photography without an external lens. It’s good for the comets, Space station passes, and that sort of thing.

There are at least two products made for doing astrophotography with a cell phone. One connects to the camera unit remotely, and it’s really just an external camera, possibly with some built-in rendering software. Software.

The other one is a cradle for your smartphone, and essentially the cradle has a telephoto lens built into it. I haven’t tried those. I have a smart scope that is controlled by my phone, but all hardware and software image processing is inside the telescope versus using my phone’s processor to stack and render images.