How to Photograph the ISS

Published October 12, 2026 · Updated October 12, 2026

Three different photos, three techniques

When someone says they've photographed the ISS, they could mean very different things. The most common, and the easiest, is the trail: a line of light streaking across the sky in a photo exposed for several seconds. The second is the silhouette: the shape of the station, solar panels and all, captured through a telescope. The third is the transit: the station outlined against the disk of the Sun or Moon for a fraction of a second.

You can get the trail with a phone and a tripod. The silhouette calls for a telescope and a good deal of practice. The transit also requires being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Let's start with the easy one.

First things first: know when and where it will pass

A good ISS photo is planned before you head out. You need three things: the time it appears, the direction it comes in from and leaves toward, and the maximum height it reaches. You'll find all of that on the next-pass card in the tracker. The direction lets you plan the framing: if it's going to rise in the west and set in the east, you know which part of the landscape needs to be in the shot.

The most photogenic passes happen shortly after dusk, when the sky still has a deep blue tone and the landscape still has a little light. High passes, above 50°, give long trails that are easy to frame with a wide-angle lens.

The trail with a phone

Most of today's phones have a night mode or a manual mode (sometimes called “Pro”) that allows exposures of several seconds. That's all you need.

• Keep the phone steady. A small tripod or any stand will do. Handheld won't work.
• Use the self-timer. Set a two- or three-second delay so tapping the screen doesn't shake the shot.
• In manual mode: ISO between 100 and 400, focus at infinity and the longest exposure your phone allows (many go up to 10 or 30 seconds).
• In night mode: if the phone senses it's not moving, it lengthens the exposure on its own. Some show the trail with no tweaking at all.
• Shoot a sequence. A pass lasts several minutes and one exposure, half a minute at most. Take several in a row and combine them later.

iPhones have one more trick: if you take a Live Photo and pick the “Long Exposure” effect in the Photos app, you get a short trail of about three seconds. It's not as spectacular, but it works without a tripod if you brace yourself well.

The trail with a camera

With a DSLR or mirrorless camera, the results are much better, especially in noise and landscape detail. The technique is the same: camera fixed on a tripod and long exposures.

These are starting points: take a test shot a few minutes before the pass and adjust. A few more tips:

• A wide-angle lens, 14 to 24 mm on full frame. A high pass sweeps across more than 100° of sky, and a standard lens will only fit part of it.
• Manual focus. Zoom in on the screen on a bright star or a distant light and turn the ring until it's a sharp point. Autofocus struggles at night.
• Shoot in RAW. It gives you room to correct the white balance and pull detail out of the shadows in the landscape.
• Continuous shooting with an intervalometer or a remote: one frame after another, with as little gap as possible between them, so the trail doesn't break up.

To get a sense of scale: when it passes directly overhead, the ISS covers a little more than one degree of sky per second. In a 20-second exposure it will leave a line about 20 degrees long, twice what your fist covers at arm's length.

Combining the photos: stacking

If you've taken a series of exposures, the last step is to merge them into a single image with the full trail. There are free programs for this, such as StarStaX and Sequator: you load all the photos and choose the mode that keeps the brightest points from each one (“lighten”). You can also do it in any editor that works with layers by setting every layer to “Lighten” blend mode.

The silhouette through a telescope

At its closest, the ISS spans a little under one arcminute of sky, about the same as Jupiter on its best nights. That's big enough for an amateur telescope to show the solar panels and the main body, but it moves so fast that keeping up with it is the real challenge.

• Very short exposures: 1/1000 to 1/2000 of a second, or high-frame-rate video with a planetary camera.
• Tracking: by hand with a Dobsonian telescope and a finder, or with a motorized mount that supports satellite tracking.
• Frame selection: only a few frames from each video come out sharp. Programs like PIPP center the station in every frame, and AutoStakkert! stacks the best ones.

If you'd rather observe it before photographing it, we have a guide to seeing the ISS with binoculars or a telescope. And if the shot against the Sun or Moon is what draws you in, we cover it in ISS transits.

Frequently asked questions

Can you photograph the ISS with a phone?

Yes. With the phone steadied and an exposure of several seconds in night or manual mode, you can capture the trail of light it leaves as it crosses the sky. To see its shape, you need a telescope.

Which lens is best for the trail?

A wide-angle lens, 14 to 24 mm on full frame. A high pass covers a large part of the sky, and a tighter lens will only fit part of it.

Why does my trail come out in several pieces?

Because there's a short gap between one photo and the next. Use continuous shooting or an intervalometer with the shortest possible interval. If the line ends abruptly in the middle of the sky, on the other hand, the station has entered Earth's shadow.

Can you see the solar panels in a regular photo?

No. To the naked eye and with a wide-angle lens, the ISS is a dot. To make out the panels you need a telescope, exposures measured in thousandths of a second and plenty of practice following it.

Which passes are best for photography?

The ones shortly after dusk, while the sky is still deep blue, that climb more than 50° above the horizon. They give you long trails and a landscape with some light left in it.