Astrophotography is one of the corners of the photo world that calls for specialized equipment, and the Sigma 14mm F1.4 DG DN Art ($1,599) fits that niche because of its bright maximum aperture, weather-sealed design, excellent handling of flare, manual focus lock, and heat retainer. The lens is also a good choice for landscapes, cityscapes, and other wide-angle subjects. However, the Editors’ Choice-winning Sigma 20mm F1.4 DG DN Art ($899) is more compelling because of its significantly lower price and similarly tuned optics.
Ultra-Wide Angle and Aperture
The Sigma 14mm F1.4 DG DN Art is the first lens we’ve seen with such a wide angle and aperture on a full-frame system. Sigma had a 14mm F1.8 DG HSM Art in the SLR days, and Sony markets the FE 14mm F1.8 GM ($1,599.99) today, but night sky photographers chase faster glass to help keep ISO and shutter combinations reasonable, as well as to more easily set focus. The Sigma 14mm is available for Sony cameras, as well as for L-Mount Alliance bodies.
The combination of a big f-stop and ultra-wide view makes for a hefty lens. The 14mm F1.4 DG DN Art’s 19-element, 15-group optical formula results in a 5.9-by-4.0-inch (HD) barrel and 2.6-pound weight. It’s a heavy lens to carry, especially if you’ve got others in your bag. If you don’t mind giving up a half-stop of light, the Sony FE 14mm F1.8 GM is downright small by comparison (3.3 by 3.9 inches, 1.0 pounds). For reference, Sigma’s 20mm F1.4 DG DN Art comes in at 3.5 by 4.5 inches, and 1.4 pounds.
Sony touts the FE 14mm F1.8 GM for astro work and it tests well for that discipline, but Sigma leans further into astro features here. The Sigma 14mm F1.4 is just as good at suppressing sagittal coma as the company’s 20mm F1.4 lens in the field, for instance. And, like the 20mm, it includes a manual focus lock and incorporates a heat retainer into its barrel (meaning you can add a lens heater to fight condensation without impacting the frame).
Sony a7R IV, f/5.6, 1/100-second, ISO 100
The barrel uses a mix of thermally stable composite (a high-grade plastic Sigma says is lighter but just as durable as aluminum) and magnesium in places where metal makes more sense. The 14mm is fully weather-sealed, and the front element includes an anti-smudge fluorine coat, so it’s ready for outdoor work. It’s too big to support front filters, but the lens includes a rear slot for gels.
Sigma includes a rotating tripod collar with an Arca-Swiss dovetail foot with the lens. You can remove it, but if you plan on using a tripod (a requirement for night sky work), you should use the lens mount as the attachment point, not your camera (the lens is front-heavy). Sigma also includes a rubber beauty ring in the box to replace the collar for those times you don’t need it, along with a soft carrying pouch and a slip-on front cap that protects the lens.
One other note: Sigma warns photographers with pacemakers to be careful with the 14mm F1.4. The lens includes a magnet, so you should keep it at least two inches away from your chest to avoid complications. If you’re concerned, you should talk to your doctor about how this might affect your health.
Controls for Night Sky Work
The 14mm F1.4 Art has all of the controls I expect from a modern high-end lens. The on-barrel aperture ring toggles between third-stop detent clicks and smooth, silent turns. It also includes an “A” position if you want to move aperture control to the camera body. The aperture lock switch lets you keep the lens set at either “A” or in its manual range but doesn’t go as far as to lock the lens down at a particular f-stop.
It’s easy to toggle the focus mode via the AF/MF toggle, and you can use the function button just below it to drive or lock focus, depending on how you set up your camera. The manual focus experience was pleasing, and the bright aperture made it pretty easy to lock focus on distant stars, even with my first-generation Sony a7R IV and its so-so rear LCD. I made sure to engage the Manual Focus Lock switch once I had focus set perfectly, which gave me the freedom to move my tripod around and try different frames.
Sony a7R IV, f/1.4, 10 seconds, ISO 100
Autofocus is as quick as I’ve seen on the a7R IV. The 14mm F1.4 uses a linear HLA focus motor that racks focus instantly and silently. The lens calls for a serious gimbal like the DJI RS 3 for video work but does a good job for point-of-view and other special effects shots. Some focus breathing is visible, however: The angle of view is slightly wider when you focus on a nearby subject. You might notice the change in rack focus shots that shift perspective for dramatic effect, but it won’t detract from takes with moderate shifts to focus.
Sony a7R IV, f/1.4, 1/1,000-second, ISO 100
Despite a design tilted toward night sky work, the 14mm F1.4 does a decent job with close-up subjects (even though it falls well outside of the macro realm). It focuses as close as 11.8 inches away from the sensor for 1:11.9 reproduction. The broad view makes for interesting close-up effect shots that show an especially broad range of your surroundings. The working distance from the front element is around three inches, though, so make sure not to shade your subject.
Sigma 14mm F1.4 Art: In the Lab
I tested the 14mm F1.4’s resolution using our standard method—tightly framing and photographing a transmissive SFRPlus test chart. There’s a slight complication in this case though: You must perform this test at a close distance with a wide lens and Sigma’s technical documentation cautions that the lens doesn’t perform as well at focus distances of less than 6.6ft (2m). This makes sense because test charts are flat, and the 14mm’s bulbous optics capture a field of focus with a decided curve. As a result, sharpness results away from the center are artificially low. This characteristic is not a problem when you focus on distant objects (the stars in the night sky are more than a couple of meters away). And for closer subjects, either using a wide aperture to induce background blur or increasing the depth of field mitigates this issue.
Sony a7R IV, f/5.6, 1/125-second, ISO 100
At f/1.4, the 14mm shows an excellent 4,400 lines at the center of the Sony a7R IV’s 60MP sensor. Off-center sharpness drops quickly, as I expect from a lens with field curvature. The center gets better at f/2, showing an outstanding 5,000 lines, and maintains that level of quality through f/11. There’s a drop in picture quality at f/16, a result of diffraction, but I still see very good results (4,000 lines) in the central area of the frame. You might still want to stop all the way down to get sunstars; the 14mm draws crisp 22-point starbursts at its minimum aperture.
Sony a7R IV, f/1.4, 1-second, ISO 400
To supplement the close-up lab charts, I made some boring images of a wide paved walkway, with the point of focus set further out. In this sequence, the lens shows softness at the edges and corners at f/1.4 and f/2, but edges are clear starting at f/2.8, and tack sharp from f/5.6-11. Thus, the 14mm F1.4 is more than capable for landscapes.
At wide apertures, the 14mm F1.4 handles backlit situations and flare quite well. I made some images into the sun with it just out of frame and the integrated hood and anti-reflective coatings helped images maintain good contrast. I couldn’t spot any evidence of ghosts or false color at wide apertures, but I did notice some reflections when I tested at f/16 for sunstars.
Sony a7R IV, f/16, 1/50-second, ISO 100
The optics show some barrel distortion and a vignette without corrections or a Raw profile. You won’t have to worry about this if you use your camera in JPG mode, but for Raw photography, make sure to enable any correction profiles to brighten edges and eliminate visible barrel distortion.
I also used the lens for some night sky photography: The lens is a technical star here (pardon the pun). It draws stars in the night sky as perfect pinpoints through most of the frame. I can spot some sagittal coma at the corners of the frame, an effect that draws stars as crosshatches with some false color rather than a pinpoint of light, but it’s no worse here than it is with the 20mm F1.4 DG DN Art. The biggest challenge I had was finding an interesting frame. The trees in my yard are a little too dense for an unobstructed view of the sky, and suburbia doesn’t lend itself to epic astro-landscape shots like you get from the dark, open skies of more remote locales. It’s a real shame that I couldn’t try this one out at Arches or Yosemite.
Sony a7R IV, f/5.6, 1/250-second, ISO 100
At near distances, it’s possible to induce some background blur. A 14mm is not my first choice for close-ups because it’s hard to find an angle that doesn’t introduce a distorted perspective, but you can certainly use it for a blurred background effect. The defocused highlights, or bokeh, is very pleasing: They are rounded, have soft edges, and are free of distracting onion skin and LoCa false color.
An Ultra-Wide Lens for Night Sky Photographers
There’s good reason for astrophotographers to get excited about the Sigma 14mm F1.4 DG DN Art. The lens is the broadest full-frame optic with an f/1.4 aperture for any system, and its on-barrel controls suit night sky work well. It also focuses quickly, shows minimal sagittal coma, and is fully weather-sealed. For the same price, the Sony FE 14mm F1.8 GM is more practical to carry, but it doesn’t have as many astro-specific features such as a manual focus lock. Therefore, Sigma’s 20mm F1.4 DG DN Art remains our Editors’ Choice winner for astrophotography primes; it’s a lot more affordable than either of the aforementioned 14mm lenses and still covers a wide angle.
Those are all specialty lenses for astrophotography, though. If you don’t care about night sky photos, the Editors’ Choice-winning Sigma 14-24mm F2.8 DG DN Art ($1,199) is a more practical ultra-wide zoom that’s also available for both E- and L-mount. And Sony owners can go even wider with the FE 12-24mm F4 G OSS ($1,774.99).
July’s night skies are legendary for their sheer abundance of celestial objects such as immense star clouds, light and dark nebulae, crowded clusters and oddities.
Daniel Zantzinger / Skywatcher’s Guide
By midnight all month, the Milky Way galaxy stretches from below the southern horizon to high overhead before plunging into the northeastern abyss. The stellar cascade soars above and beyond, so these nights are primed for long exposure astrophotography and time-lapse videos.
Constellation Scorpius reaches its highest point above the southern horizon for the year — culminates — when it straddles the north/south meridian 9 p.m. July 20. To its east lies Constellation Sagittarius, which culminates next month. When you look between the two constellations, you’re looking in the direction of the unseen bulging center of the Milky Way. As a point of reference, the exquisite Butterfly Nebula (NGC 6302) follows the most direct line of sight to the core.
Scorpius and Sagittarius are home to light nebulae including emission, reflection and planetary nebulae, as well as dark nebulae known as Barnard objects, which are essentially dense patches of gas and dust blocking starlight from behind.
Under dark and clear skies, it’s easy to become awestruck in this dense and diverse neighborhood even with the naked eye. The scorpion asterism alone has 182 visible stars. The other objects here, however, are best resolved and teased out from their compact concentrations with at least a small telescope. Image-stabilized 10×50 binoculars will also provide sufficient in-depth focus.
Find Antares, the heart star of Scorpius, a bright and unmissable red supergiant in the center of the asterism. With a telescope, zero in to observe the delicate nebulosity of Messier object 4, the Rho-Ophiuchus cloud complex illuminated by Antares and neighboring stars. With the naked eye, look east above the hook-shaped stinger to find the Ptolemy Cluster (M7), an open star cluster of about 80 scattered blue stars.
The reason that this part of the sky is so target rich is because three or more bands — arms — of the galaxy overlap. “Or more” because, as is often the case with clouds, it’s often difficult to visually determine where one stops and another starts. Nevertheless, the principals are the Sagittarius-Carina, Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms.
The center of the Milky Way is for the most part obscured by dense clouds of gas and dust that block visible light. There are, however, a few significant gaps in the veil — Baade’s Window for one — that allow skywatchers to observe some of the inner structures.
East of Scorpius the skywatcher enters Sagittarius, the superlative centaur Chiron to the ancient Greeks and the archer god Nergal to the Babylonians. This is high-end real estate for vast star clouds and stunning nebulae. The Large Sagittarius Star Cloud is the brightest stretch of road along the Milky Way and the innermost galactic structure that can be observed in visible wavelengths. It is iconic and easily recognizable by its dark nebulae rift lanes of light-obscuring molecular clouds composed of hydrogen gas with a blend of about 150 exotic species of dust. Note that it’s only due to the existence of Baade’s Window that we can see the large star cloud at all.
In Sagittarius, look for the famous Lagoon (M8), Omega (M17) and North America (NGC 7000) light emission nebulae. The Trifid Nebula (M20) is a hybrid of both light and dark nebulae: a luminous star-forming area trifurcated by a lobed dark nebula cataloged as Barnard 85.
Constellation Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer, due north of Scorpius, culminates at 9 p.m. July 25. Dark nebulae hunters will find ample prey near the Sagittarius-Ophiuchus boundary and within Ophiuchus itself. This frontier holds myriad highly complex Barnard objects. The Dark Horse and Rider is composed of the Pipe Nebula, the hind quarters and back leg of the horse. Barnard 63 is the front leg, B270 is the horse’s head and B276 is the rider’s head.
Ophiuchus (pronounced oh-fee-YOU-kuss) also rewards skywatchers with its multitude of star clusters, the most impressive of which are M9 and M10. Called globular clusters because of their spherical shapes, they contain at minimum tens of thousands of stars in an extremely compressed area. M12, M62 and M107 are outstanding sights as well.
Look for NGC 6240, the oddball Starfish Galaxy, a merger remnant on the center-right of the asterism. A starburst galaxy of intense star birthing activity, it formed when three smaller galaxies slowly merged over several billion years, and now resembles a starfish. This lenticular galaxy retains their original three nuclei and native black holes, two of which are expected to eventually merge into a supermassive black hole.
Even though the Milky Way is “our home galaxy,” its heart is impossibly far away. To put things into perspective, Antares is 554.5 light years from the Sun. One light year is 5.88 trillion miles, so traveling even near the speed of light it would take more than 40 generations of astronauts to arrive at Antares. The center of the Milky Way is 26,000 light years away, so its light arriving today left it during the peak of the ice age’s Last Glacial Maximum.
The moon is full 9:41 p.m. July 3 and is called the Full Buck Moon, a reference to the mature growth of male deer antlers.
With little or no astronomical darkness at the start of July in northern latitudes, some astrophotographers might think this month is a write-off for creating night sky images. Not so! July is one of the best few months of the year to get the Milky Way high in the sky as seen from the northern hemisphere – and, crucially, its bright center – while July’s full ‘Super Buck Moon’ is one of the brightest yet lowest-hanging of the year.
Add plenty of conjunctions between the planets and the moon, the year’s first so-called supermoon, the peak of the Delta Aquariids meteor shower and 2023’s second ‘Manhattanhenge’ for New Yorkers and there’s plenty more to get excited about for astrophotographers in July 2023.
Read: The beginner’s guide to photographing the night sky
July 2-3: a full ‘Super Buck Moon’
Everyone knows that the sun reaches its highest in the sky as late June’s solstice, but have you ever thought about the moon? Since a full moon is opposite the sun with respect to Earth it follows that the ‘Buck Moon’ will be the lowest full moon of the year. It will also be the first of four supermoons, though detecting a slightly larger (because it’s closer) full moon with your eye is almost impossible. Perhaps more importantly it will rise at its most southeasterly point of the year as seen from the northern hemisphere, which may bring some novel opportunities to catch that all-important moment as it appears on the horizon next to an interesting foreground object. Check your local moonrise time and the PhotoPills app and line up the appearance of the ‘Buck Moon’ with something interesting – a building, a mountain or a monument – for an unforgettable image. Note that although it technically turns full on July 3, it will rise closest to sunset on July 2.
Read: How to photograph the full moon
July 12 and 13: ‘Manhattanhenge #2
‘Manhattanhenge’ occurs on four evenings per year in May and July. (Image credit: Getty Images)
For two sunsets in a row a few weeks on either side of the summer solstice the sun sets in between skyscrapers on was-west streets in Manhattan, New York City. It’s possible because the city streets on the grid are aligned with the cardinal points – and June 21’s solstice saw the sunset at its most northwesterly point before reversing. Dr. Jackie Faherty at the American Museum of Natural History calculates that on these times you can see the phenomenon, though it’s subtly different on each night:
Read: Night photography techniques, tips and tricks
Sunday, July 9: Venus shines brightest
You’ll need a telescope to capture the phases of Venus (Image credit: Jamie Cooper/Getty Images)
Venus has been hanging about in the post-sunset twilight for all of 2023, but that’s about to end. It’s ironic that it looks its brightest as it retreats to a slim crescent (it’s just 25%-lit this week) – which is due to its reflective cloudy atmosphere. Catch it before it sinks into the sun’s glare later this month, preferably using a high frame rate camera on a telescope to capture it as a crescent.
Read: The best cameras for astrophotography
July 10: July’s dark sky window opens
Today it’s Last Quarter (or Third Quarter) Moon, which sees our satellite half-lit from our point of view and rising after midnight. That leaves the night skies free of moonlight, which is perfect for close-up astrophotography. It’s an ideal time to get out and photograph the Milky Way, though some crescent moonlight can be helpful in slightly illuminating foregrounds. Check a moon phase calculator when planning any landscape astrophotography trip – this next week will have a waning crescent moon in the southeastern sky shortly before dawn.
Read: The best lenses for astrophotography
July 17: New Moon & Perseids
As well as being the date of the New Moon – the darkest night of the month – it’s also the start of the annual (and prolific) Perseid meteor shower. The peak night isn’t until August, but you may start seeing sporadic ‘shooting stars’ while out at night.
Read: How to photograph the stunning Perseid meteor shower
July 19-21: Planets and a crescent moon
With Mars and Venus sinking out of view and Mercury rising this week brings one last good chance to capture the gorgeous sight of bright planets around a slim crescent moon right after sunset. On Wednesday the crescent moon will be just 5% illuminated and close to Venus while by Friday it will be 15% illuminated and aligned with all three planets.
Read: When to photograph the moon
July 29 and 30: Delta Aquariids meteor shower peak
About 25 meteors per hour may be possible around midnight tonight as this relatively minor meteor shower peaks, but since the moon will be very bright it’s not going to be easy. Still, it can’t hurt to leave a camera in the backyard to take a few hours’ worth of long exposures – you might just catch a ‘shooting star’.
Read: How to photograph a meteor shower
Wide-angle shot of the month: The Milky Way’s galactic core
Avoid using light painting to illuminate foregrounds in Dark Sky Parks. (Image credit: Getty Images)
The Milky Way’s bright core around the constellation Sagittarius is only visible at certain times of the year, but you also need darkness. So head out somewhere really dark – using a light pollution map or choosing a Dark Sky Park or a Dark Sky Discovery Site – bearing in mind that some major National Parks that are also Dark Sky Parks now ban the use of light painting to illuminate foregrounds and rock formations at night. Once you’re in place use PhotoPills, which has a useful Night AR feature that overlays the Milky Way onto what you can see – and also shows how it will move during the night.
Read: How to photograph the Milky Way
Settings will depend on your lens and camera, but with a full-frame camera on a tripod wearing a wide-angle lens (14mm or so) you’ll want to begin experimenting in manual mode with about ISO800-3200 and a shutter speed of about 25 seconds. If you want to go any longer than that to get more details and color from the core of our galaxy you’ll need to enter the world of star tracker camera mounts.
Read more:
Astrophotography: How-to guides, tips and videos
Astrophotography tools: the best camera, lenses and gear
Magical Milky Way and star-studded skies have made it to the shortlist of this year’s Astronomy Photographer of the Year Shortlist. Organized by the Royal Observatory Greenwich with support from Liberty Special Markets and the BBC Sky at Night Magazine, the night photography competition gained more than 4,000 entries from 64 countries around the world.
Open to both amateur and professional photographers, The Astronomy Photographer of the Year award seeks out passionate, patient photographers who take awe-inspiring photos of the sky at night. Now in its 15th year, it continues to grow in popularity. It has nine categories: Skyscapes, aurorae, people and space, our sun, our moon, planets, comets and asteroids, stars and nebulae, and galaxies. There is also an award for the young astronomy photographer of the year.
The judging panel will select a further two winners for the Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer, which recognizes someone who is new to the genre, and the Annie Maunder Prize for image innovation, which will be awarded to a photographer who processed an image with pre-existing open-source data.
• Check out the best cameras for astrophotography so you can start photographing the night sky too!
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023
An overall winner will also be selected from the shortlist to receive a £10,000 (around $12,800 or AU$19,000) cash prize, and the young photographer of the year will take home £1,500 ($1,895 or $AU2,860) in cash, plus a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ MD telescope donated by Celestron. Runners-up from each category will receive £500, the highly commended photographer will receive £250 while the special category winners will each be awarded £750.
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023
The shortlisted images are truly out of this world, featuring a vibrant red and blue colored the tarantula nebulae by Steeve Body, a glowing emerald sky in Iceland from the aurora borealis by Lorenzo Ranieri Tenti, and a long exposure shot of majestic star trails capturing the movement of the earth. Perhaps one of the most impressive shots of them all comes from the Letian Wang who pieced together nine high-res video frames to create an image that shows the transit of the China Space Station across the sun.
Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on September 14 2023 and all winning photos, plus a selection of shortlisted images, will be exhibited at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London for an admission fee of £10.
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023
Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023
Why not also check out the best telescopes for astrophotography and capture distant plants and nebulae?
While I am an adherent to the “right tool for the job” principle, I am also open to a single device that can replace two other devices. So far, my experience has been mixed: while the iPhone and Android smartphones made dedicated music players like the iPod superfluous, their small displays make them less than ideal for reading or watching videos (at least to my eyes). You win some, you lose some.
But with folding smartphones, the promise is that this one device will be so good for reading and watching videos that it will eliminate the need for a standalone tablet while making phone-centric tasks like email, maps, social media, workplace collaboration, and so on even more immersive and enjoyable. If it works, it’s the best of both worlds. If it doesn’t, well. We’ve been there before.
Folding smartphones have run into some obvious headwinds, of course. They’re very expensive, often twice as expensive as a typical flagship smartphone. The folding display technology has had reliability and durability issues. Developers have been slow to adapt their Android apps to the unique benefits of this form factor. And folding phones, while elegant and fun while open, are thick and heavy when closed, and they don’t close flat. Compromises are everywhere.
And given Google’s unfortunately spotty record with hardware quality, it’s reasonable to question how this company could possibly succeed where its more experienced competitors—mostly Samsung—have so far been hit or miss. It’s certainly been at the top of my mind, and never more so than when my $1900 credit card purchase was completed on Monday as Google shipped its first folding smartphone, the Pixel Fold, to my home.
And … wow.
Put simply, I think I may be looking at the future of smartphones here. Not so much in Google’s v1 outing, which is far too expensive to ever be mainstream, but rather in the way that the online giant pulled an Apple, observed what has worked and not worked in previous folding smartphone designs, waited until it could do better, and then finally pulled the trigger.
In real-world terms, this means that the Pixel Fold is thin—about half an inch or so—for a folding phone while closed, making it feel less chunky and awkward than Samsung’s offerings, and easily pocketable. It also closes flat, with no air gap, and because it features the instant classic Pixel camera bar across its back, you can use it normally, if slightly angled, on a table when closed. (When open, you get some wobble.) And the outside display, while small at just 5.8 inches, mostly fills up the exterior of the device, and is not oddly tall and thin like Samsung’s, helping it look and feel more natural as a smartphone.
When unfolded, the Pixel Fold is unbelievably thin, much thinner than any of my smartphones. Its internal folding display is expansive and a welcome sight to my middle-aged eyes. It’s like a 7.6-inch mini-tablet with a blessedly square (6:5) aspect ratio that I wish Google has used for the Pixel Tablet as well. But that’s the magic here, a big part of why it feels like the future: this is a smartphone that is small and thin enough to fit fine in my front pocket, but it also opens up like a flower into an even thinner device with a much bigger display that is ideal for consuming content. It’s not just two things in one, it’s two useful things in one.
What everyone is probably most interested in is the folding bit. That is, how well does the hinge work and how much rumpling can one see on the screen’s crease? Here, I have mostly good news with the caveat that I just got the thing: the hinge is fantastic and something the Surface team would brag about incessantly, and the folding display is, well, a folding display. You can see the crease clearly when the device is off, but it’s not obnoxious and it does seem to disappear when fully open, depending on the app. Or, apps: when you use two apps side-by-side, the crease disappears as well.
As a Pixel fan, I like how Google has also blended the best of its smartphone platform with this new form factor. Obviously, Pixel Fold benefits from the same work on large-screen Android compatibility as with Pixel Tablet. But unlike with the tablet, the cameras here really matter—they’re not quite as good as the setup you get with Pixel 7 Pro, but close—and you can take selfies with the main cameras thanks to the external display. And can take astrophotography shots without needing a tripod because the device can be angled to the stars and kept steady with that rock-solid hinge. Nice.
The basics are, well, basic. You get the same clean Android image as on other Pixels with the same AI benefits, and the same basic UI found on the Pixel Tablet (when the Fold is open). And I really like its industrial design. But you also get the same acceptable but uninspiring performance, I’d imagine, and I’d be shocked if the battery life was any good given how much trouble my Pixel 7 Pro has getting through a day. (The Pixel 7 Pro has a bigger battery than the dual-screen Pixel Fold, too.) I will find out.
The question before us, then, is whether a Pixel Fold is an acceptable replacement for a Pixel 7 Pro and a Pixel Tablet (or maybe an iPad Mini, if you’re looking for a tablet a little closer in size). Wherever you fall in this debate, the issues I see are price and battery. A Pixel 7 Pro ($900) and Pixel Tablet ($500) are together less expensive ($1400) by hundreds of dollars, and each has its own battery. But then again, you can’t stick a Pixel Tablet in your pocket, can you?
I’ll spend some more time with Pixel Fold and report back soon.
The Cherry Springs Star Party has become an increasingly popular destination for stargazers along the east coast, for good reason. Now that the word is out about the pristine skies of Cherry Springs, the event sells out quicker every year.
It is held at a state park between Coudersport and Galeton in Potter County, Pennsylvania during the new moon in June.
It takes place on the overnight observing field at Cherry Springs State Park, which sits at 2,300 ft. elevation. The field offers great views of the core of the Milky Way and a 360-degree view of the night sky.
Cherry Springs State Park is an International Dark Sky Park and one of the darkest locations on the east coast. Its dark skies are protected by the undeveloped forest around the park and the shielded lights from the nearby communities.
Since this is the closest Dark Sky Park to us, we try to attend this star party every year. It takes us roughly 4 hours to get there and it’s well worth the drive for the Bortle 2 skies.
Arriving at Cherry Springs Star Party
Registration for Cherry Springs typically opens in March and has sold out quickly the last few years. At the time of writing this post, registration is just over $55 USD per person. That includes camping on the overnight observing field for the duration of the star party, access to power for your gear, and a great lineup of scheduled talks and activities.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with your digital tickets. It’s a good idea to print those out and bring them with you to the star party for checking in at the front gate upon arrival.
The star party typically runs from Thursday – Sunday. If you decide to show up early (or stay later), you will be required to pay the state park fees for the extra days that you decide to stay.
When you arrive, you get a package with a schedule of events, star party rules, and a ticket for the raffle.
Camping at the Cherry Springs Star Party (2022)
Where to Stay for the Cherry Springs Star Party
As mentioned in other star party posts, it’s always easier to camp on-site at the star party. This is one of the locations that we can drive to and therefore, we love camping on the field with our camper, Voyager 1.
There are three areas available for stargazing, though only one is associated with the star party.
Overnight Astronomy Observation Field: this is where the star party is held. Your registration includes access to this field for excellent overnight viewing. White light is prohibited in this area and only dim, red lights can be used.
Night Sky Public Viewing Area: this operates like a drop-in/short-term stargazing experience and is located across the road from the overnight observation field. Lighting restrictions are not enforced here, though, for your own observing experience, you may want to have a red filter or cover for your flashlight to preserve your night vision.
Rustic Campground: also across the road from the observing field, there is a campground for overnight stargazing for casual stargazers. Because there are no lighting restrictions, this area is not recommended for serious stargazers.
Please note, there are no showers on site. If you are camping, and need access to showers, there are some available at Lyman Run State Park (6 miles away) for a small fee.
Cherry Springs State Park Map
In addition to the options above, some people opt to set up their equipment on the star party observing field and stay off site at a nearby hotel. If you choose this option, be sure to park your vehicle across the road in the public parking area before dark. The gates close at dusk and there will be no in or out on the observing field.
Meals and Food Options
If you are camping, consider that open flames are not permitted on the field. This will impact what you pack for food. If you have a cooler with food, there are nearby options to buy ice (like the Cherry Springs Country Store). Be mindful of bears in the area and be sure to store your food and cooler in your vehicle.
There is also a food vendor on site. They are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, in addition to their late-night hours until 2 a.m. for coffee and light snacks. Like the rest of the star party, the food vendor tent will be decorated with red lights.
The town of Coudersport is also a 21-minute drive and has additional food options. There are other (smaller) options available in the immediate vicinity of the park.
Events at Cherry Springs Star Party
There are two days (Friday/Saturday) packed with activities at the star party, including:
Speakers: there are multiple speakers throughout Friday/Saturday. You can check the schedule for times, topics and speaker bios.
Gear Swap: bring your old gear to swap or sell at the event. Check the schedule for when this event takes place.
Raffle: there is a door prize raffle with tons of prizes. Be sure to get your ticket when you register and check the schedule for the deadline for submitting your ticket(s). Like most raffles, you must be present to win.
In addition to the onsite activities, there are other nearby attractions, such as other state parks and an Ice Mine.
What to Bring
In addition to your gear, you are going to want to make sure you are prepared for the cool weather.
As mentioned, Cherry Springs State Park is located on a mountain, which means the weather is generally cooler and can get very damp. Even though the event is held in June, you will want to make sure you bring plenty of warm clothes, including warm footwear and a heavy jacket.
It also helps to have things like blankets, lawn chairs, binoculars, and tarps or telescope covers for your equipment.
Unspoiled Dark Skies
The dark, Bortle Scale class 2 skies of Cherry Springs are incredible. This site is dark enough for Venus to cast a shadow, and zodiacal light is visible on a good night.
On a particularly incredible night at Cherry Springs (during the Black Forest Star Party in the fall), I was able to see the Triangulum Galaxy with my naked eye.
The timing of the Cherry Springs Star Party in June means that it is the perfect time to watch the Milky Way core rising above the southeastern horizon.
Milky Way photography and nightscape photography are popular choices at this event. It is also a great location to take a timelapse of the night sky with a sea of red lights below.
The Milky Way from the Cherry Springs Star Party.
One of the most enjoyable experiences at Cherry Springs is simply lying down in a zero-gravity chair and looking up.
You do not need a telescope to enjoy the skies at Cherry Springs, your naked eye will reveal countless stars and even bright nebulae when your eyes have adapted to the darkness.
Deep-Sky Astrophotography
While at the Cherry Springs Star Party, we like to take advantage of the dark skies and shoot unfiltered, often going after something in the core of the Milky Way.
It is wise to take advantage of the dark, new moon skies of the Cherry Springs Star Party, and capture a deep-sky object that is not possible to shoot from home.
This means that narrowband imaging is not a practical choice, as this type of astrophotography can be done successfully in areas with heavy light pollution.
Instead, focus on more challenging broadband targets such as dark nebulae, or reflection nebulae that require dark skies and plenty of exposure time to capture.
We have shot a variety of targets from this location, including:
Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex taken by Ashley at Cherry Springs (2022).
When taking pictures from this park, I usually take exposures of about 2 minutes long depending on the target I am shooting.
With quality dark skies like this, an integration of 1-hour will provide a healthy signal-to-noise ratio, with an incredibly clean image.
A typical deep-sky project from this location includes 2-3 hours of total exposure time, using exposures between 90-120 seconds each.
The Blue Horsehead Nebula taken by Trevor at Cherry Springs (2022).
Rules at Cherry Springs
Like most star parties, there are rules for ensuring that everyone enjoys their star party experience. Below are the rules for the Cherry Springs Star Party.
No Driving after sunset: the front gate to the observing field will close at dusk and reopen at dawn. Always follow the posted speed limit when driving in the park.
No campfires: no open flames allowed on the overnight observing field.
No white light: Dim red lights only after sunset, no white light allowed after dark. This includes interior and exterior lighting for cars, tents and RVs, and electronics.
Electric pedestals on the field are for powering astronomical equipment, computers and small appliances only.
Cherry Spring Star Party Impressions
The folks at the Astronomical Society of Harrisburg throw a great star party. It is always really well organized, with plenty of communication and signage leading up to and at the event. Staff are around throughout the duration of the star party and are always very welcoming.
It is also a prime location for capturing the core of the Milky Way with great views of many of the summer constellations and deep-sky objects.
After coming for many years, this has become one of our favorite star parties. We love that we can enjoy the full star party experience camping on the field in our camper and get the chance to meet many new (and often repeat) astrophotographers and visual astronomers. It’s a great place to ‘geek out’ and talk shop about astronomy.
An amateur astronomer points in the direction of a celestial object under exceptionally dark skies at Cherry Springs State Park in northern Pennsylvania earlier this month.
Wassana Laisukang
COUDERSPORT, Pa. — Up a winding road that cuts through the Allegheny Plateau, hundreds of amateur astronomers in campers and pickups stream into northern Pennsylvania each spring and summer in search of one thing: stars.
It’s something they can’t get enough of in the halo of light pollution that surrounds most cities. By contrast, Cherry Springs State Park, located about 135 miles northwest of Wilkes-Barre,is one of the very few truly dark sky sites in the entire eastern United States.
Twice a year, in June and September, park officials and local astronomy clubs team up to host “star parties” that draw people from as far away as Florida and Wisconsin. For these amateur astronomers, there’s no replacement for the inky-black skies that reveal what they affectionately refer to as “faint fuzzies” — dim and distant galaxies, star clusters and nebulae.
The weather, however, is always a wild card. Only the third and final night of the June event this year, timed to coincide with the new moon, delivers clear skies. Molly Wakeling is betting that will be enough to capture LDN 1262, a wispy nebula in the constellation Cepheus. She’s hoping to photograph it, something that would be impossible from her home in Dayton, Ohio.
Red lamps, used to preserve night vision for observing, are seen on a field at the Cherry Springs Star Party in northern Pennsylvania.
Wassana Laisukang
“I do the objects from the dark skies that are hard for me to do from home,” Wakeling says. A quick glance at a dark sky map makes clear why western Ohio is such a challenge for her, and why Cherry Springs is so inviting, even if it means waiting out clouds and rain.
Digital cameras have changed the game
Wakeling is part of a growing trend among amateur stargazers. Traditionally, “visual astronomers” have simply looked through an eyepiece to view objects that are often thousands — or even millions — of light-years away. In recent years, however, sensitive digital cameras have brought amateur astrophotography into its own. Long and multiple exposures collect much more light than the human eye and can then be “stacked” to assemble extraordinary images, as evidenced by Wakeling’s online gallery.
Eric Roth, a past president of the Astronomical Society of Harrisburg, which organizes the annual star party, says 550 people registered for this year’s event, with another 400 on a waitlist. That tops the previous record set in 2022. He says the switch from visual astronomy to astrophotography is “a big-time change” that seems to have really taken off around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Roth considers himself an old-school, through-the-eyepiece “strictly visual astronomer.” But today “it seems like everybody is going now for astrophotography.”
He doesn’t think that is a bad thing. It’s helping pass the amateur astronomy baton to a new generation. “We’re skewing younger than we used to, which is good,” Roth says. He surmises that it’s because the gadgetry of astrophotography appeals more to a younger demographic.
Amateur astronomer Molly Wakeling sets up her telescope and camera equipment to capture an especially faint nebula at the Cherry Springs Star Party in northern Pennsylvania.
Scott Neuman/NPR
Trinna Cuellar, 41, lives in New Jersey and has also recently gotten into astrophotography. She talks about her telescope gear the way some people talk about a prized sports car — citing specs and rattling off lingo.
Cuellar has brought her son, Lev, who is almost 11, to Cherry Springs so he can get his first glimpse of “the galaxy we live in” — the Milky Way, she says.
She was first at Cherry Springs as a child and credits the experience with sparking her interest in astronomy. “My first time here, I think I was 7 or 8 years old,” she says. “We came to see the stars, and I was just blown away.”
A few years ago, at the start of the pandemic, she took the leap into astrophotography.
Skip Bird, a retired science teacher, stands next to his telescope last week at Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania.
Scott Neuman/NPR
“I love the creative freedom,” Cuellar says. “There’s a lot of flexibility in how you put together that final image.”
“I can actually create something that kind of resembles a Hubble image,” she says, referencing NASA’s famed Hubble Space Telescope.
An escape from light pollution
While the dark skies of Cherry Springs benefit all amateur astronomers, with filters and other workarounds, astrophotographers can mitigate some of the light pollution issues they experience at home. For visual astronomers such as 69-year-old Wayne Petko, though, dark skies are a must.
That’s why he’s been coming to Cherry Springs from his home in New Jersey for the past quarter-century — and not just for star parties but for new moons throughout the summer, when there’s usually 50 to 100 other enthusiasts on the observing field with him, he says.
Wayne Petko, who lives in New Jersey, has been coming to observe under the exceptionally dark skies at Cherry Springs for a quarter-century.
Scott Neuman/NPR
Petko belongs to the New Jersey Astronomical Association, whose observatory is at a state park situated west of New York City and about 40 milesnorth of Trenton, where “there’s been a gradual upswing in light pollution.”
In fact, Petko’s observation about an upsurge in light pollution is backed by data. A study published earlier this year in the journal Science indicates that on average, the night sky has gotten nearly 10% brighter each year from 2011 to 2022.
That would probably come as no surprise to Stephen Alba, who lives “15 minutes from Newark Airport,” where the stars are hidden by a hazy glow. He, his wife and young son arrived at the Cherry Springs party without a truck full of complicated astronomy gear — just a simple pair of binoculars.
“We want to see the Milky Way,” Alba says, smiling. “We’re just here to experience it.”
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Over the next two weeks, the moon will be very prominent in our sky, starting as a first quarter (half moon) on Monday and becoming a full moon a week later on July 3. It will be the first full moon of the astronomical summer. Without a doubt, moonlight, especially full moonlight, louse up the skies for good stargazing and astrophotography, which are near and dear to me. Despite that, I love, love, love full moons! I call it my magic moon time.
I love the names given to full moons by various cultures worldwide. One Native American name for the July full moon is the Full Buck Moon because this is when buck deer begin sprouting new antlers. It’s also called the Thunder Moon because of the more frequent thunderstorms this time of year. My favorite name for the July full moon comes from the ancient Chinese Buddhist tradition. They called it the Hungry Ghost Moon. I am still trying to figure out why.
Whatever you call the July full moon, you can’t help but notice that it’s a low rider and doesn’t rise very high in the sky. That’s one of the reasons I love full-moon gazing this time of year. You can moon gaze for an extended time without extending your neck as much!
(Mike Lynch)
Not only is it nice to take in the July moon, but you can also have a lot of fun taking pictures of it. You don’t need a fancy camera; even your cell phone can do a pretty good job if you do it right. A zoom lens and exposure control can help so the image doesn’t get washed out.
You can take fantastic moon pictures through a small to moderate telescope. Hold your camera or phone over the eyepiece as steady as possible, which can be challenging. I suggest you keep hitting the shutter button or icon; hopefully, you’ll get some decent shots. If possible, rig up a tripod or something else to help steady your camera or phone over the eyepiece. You can also purchase an adapter that attaches to your telescope and eyepiece. One I recommend is the Orion SteadyPix EZ Smartphone Telescope Photo Adapter
Orion SteadyPix EZ Smartphone Telescope Photo Adapter (Mike Lynch)
Along with keeping the telescope steady, another essential thing is to start taking your shots through a low-magnification eyepiece with your telescope. That will have a much wider aperture than a high-magnification eyepiece. Once you get some low-magnification photos, see what you can do with a higher power.
Full moons are not my favorite to photograph through a telescope; I prefer pictures of the moon at other phases in its monthly cycle. Crescent moons, half moons, and even gibbous (football-shaped) moons are all fun to photograph. You can see more detail, especially what’s known as the terminator. That line divides the moon’s sunlit part and the part in shadow.
Once you get the photos, you can work with them a little in Photoshop or some other software, even within many smartphones, to make them look even brighter or sharper, although you shouldn’t have to do too much. You can also do some editing just with your phone. I was just amazed by the clarity. You can see details in the dark maria or plains on the moon and the mountains and craters, suitable enough to frame and hang on a wall in your home!
While you’re moon shooting or just moon gazing in the early evening eastern sky check out the low western sky. The very bright planet Venus and the much fainter Mars are in a close celestial conjunction or what I call a celestial hugging. On Friday, June 30, Mars will be just a little over three and a half degrees to the upper left of Venus. That’s about half the width of your fist at arm’s length. Just to the upper left of Mars is the moderately bright star Regulus.
Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at [email protected].
The Google Pixel Fold arrives a little late to the foldable party but, based on my time with the device, it’s a smartphone/tablet combo that mostly delights, and which is sure to earn a place among our ranking of the best Foldable Phones.
From its construction, including its precision hinge, to its high-resolution screens, the Pixel Fold is a well-thought-out Android phone that’s equally at home as a small-screen, but thick, 5.8-inch phone or, unfolded, as a 7.6-inch mini tablet.
The large bezel around the main screen might give pause to some, but it quickly fades into the background, thanks to a responsive, colorful, and multitasking-friendly screen. Even the unavoidable crease down the middle is somewhat less prominent than those on competing foldable phones. And when you fold the Pixel Fold, the two sides meet with nary any visible space between them.
The collection of cameras on board do not disappoint. They can capture lovely landscapes, portraits, macro-like photos (there isn’t a dedicated macro mode), astrophotography, and striking long exposures that use image segmentation to blur motion while keeping other aspects of the scene in focus.
I’m particularly pleased that Google put a 5x optical zoom on this phone. Sure, that’s half of what you get on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but it does beat its closest foldable rival, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4.
The Google Pixel Fold in my hand, opened to the 7.6-inch display (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google has equipped the Pixel Fold with its Tensor G2 chip (the same one that’s in its Pixel 7 line), a slightly aging piece of silicon that doesn’t beat the competition, but which proved more than powerful enough for every task I threw at it. The Pixel Fold is as at home with web browsing as it is with high-intensity gaming. Plus, the screens’ variable refresh rates keep everything looking smooth. A small nitpick might be, well, the lack of nits. The Pixel Fold’s main screen is noticeably less bright than the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s (the latter boasts more nits), and while I didn’t have any issues on cloudy days, it might struggle a bit in direct sunlight.
Naturally, Android 13 (with five years of promised security updates) is perfectly at home on the Pixel Fold, but so are all the Google apps that Google has optimized for the new platform. Mail, Photos, and more work like a charm on the big screen, and there’s real joy in being able to drag and drop a photo from another app into an email.
Google arguably stumbles a bit when it comes to the pricing. $1,799 / £1,749 is a lot to pay for a single device, especially as other newcomers, like the smaller but quite impressive Motorola Razr Plus, come in at under $1,000 (Google hasn’t announced any plans to release the phone in Australia, but we’ll let you know if and when we get official confirmation either way). My take, though is that you’re essentially getting two premium devices in one here, and Google is asking you to pay for that.
Overall, I truly enjoyed my time with Google’s first folding device. It’s not a tentative or compromised first attempt at the form factor: the Google Pixel Fold makes a clean and emphatic landing in the foldable space.
Google unveiled the Pixel Fold during its May 10 Google I/0 2023 developer conference keynote, at which it also unveiled its mid-range Google Pixel 7a phone, the Google Pixel Tablet and charging speaker dock, and a ton of new AI technology.
You can preorder the Google Pixel Fold now, with shipping set to commence on June 27, although exactly when you’ll be able to get your hands on the phone depends on where you are. The Fold comes in two colors: Porcelain (off-white) and Obsidian (black). My review unit is Obsidian, and I think I prefer it over the white.
The Pixel Fold in my hand, folded to show the 5.8-inch external display (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
If you haven’t already, you should disabuse yourself of the notion that when you buy a foldable you’re buying one device, and so should pay for one device. The Google Pixel Fold is, like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, two full-blown devices in one and, as such, it’s very nearly worth the $1,799 / £1,749 price tag.
How do I figure this? There are two screens on Google’s first foldable, one 5.8 inches and the other 7.6 inches, and each one is large enough to operate as a standalone communication, information, gaming, and entertainment platform.
There are more cameras on the Pixel Fold than on the average handset: three on the back, another one on the external screen, and then one more right above the main display.
If you purchased, say, an iPhone 14 Pro ($999 / £1,099 / AU$1,749) and an iPad mini ($499 / £479 / $749), that would cost you about $1,500, or the UK and Australian equivalents. And naturally, you’re paying a premium for more cameras, and that exquisite flexible and hard-to-manufacturer foldable display.
My point is, before you dismiss the Pixel Fold for its hefty price tag, I suggest you consider what you’re actually getting for your money, and what this impressive Android 13 smartphone and tablet can do.
Still, at this price, the Pixel Fold is more than a considered purchase, and I fully understand that – especially if you’re thinking about the 512GB and nearly $2,000 ($1,919 / £1,869) model – the cost will be a considerable issue.
The good news is that there are already Google Pixel Fold trade-in deals that essentially cut the price of the phone in half. Basically, there should be almost no reason to pay full list price for what is a very impressive device.
Google Pixel Fold design
The right form factor for a phone-to-mini-tablet foldable
Feels solid, if a bit heavy
Folds completely flat
Whisper-quiet operation
Big bezel will distress some
Google’s decision to wait out Samsung through four iterations of its foldable devices (and almost five, with the Galaxy Z Fold 5 set to be announced in the next few weeks at the time of writing) turns out to have been a smart move. The Pixel Fold is in many ways what I want all foldables to be.
When folded, its 139.7mm tall by 79.5mm wide by 12.1mm thick frame is like a very thick 5.8-inch smartphone. Unlike the tall and narrow Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4, the dimensions of which, when folded, stretch the definition of a traditional smartphone display, the Pixel Fold and its front screen could almost pass for a standard smartphone; that is as long as you overlook the flat hinge side, which does not match the curved corners on the opposite side.
Plus, if you don’t count the rather prominent camera bump (really a band that runs almost the width of the back of the phone), the Pixel Fold is, at 5.8mm unfolded, slightly thinner than the 6.3mm Galaxy Z Fold.
Google Pixel Fold stainless steel hinge (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Even by foldable standards, though, the Pixel Fold is a bit heavy. It weighs 283 grams – that’s 20 grams more than the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and, unsurprisingly, 40 grams heavier than Apple’s current biggest phone, the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Again, if you don’t appreciate that multi-purpose devices like this are naturally going to be bigger and heavier than standard smartphones, you’re barking up the wrong, er, device tree.
This is a premium phone, with high-end materials like a polished aluminum frame, and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus on both the front screen and the back. The hinge is stainless steel and the entire body is IPX8-rated, which means it’s ready to survive everything from a storm to an accidental drop in the bath (I didn’t submerge the phone but did run it under some water – it survived).
The Google Pixel Fold’s stainless steel hinge and flat-folding operation (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
The hinge operation, by the way, is excellent. It’s smooth, whisper-quiet (quieter even than the Z Fold 4, which makes a little crinkling sound when you open and close it), and can open to a full 180 degrees or virtually anywhere in between (to support tabletop and Tent operation).
I opened and closed the phone a lot during my testing time, and came away with the distinct impression of long-term durability.
Aside from the rather wide and tall camera bump, there aren’t many distinctive features on the outside of the Pixel Fold. On the back, below that bump, is a polished version of Google’s distinctive ‘G’. The hinge has no markings at all. Opposite the hinge, on the right edge of the phone when it’s unfolded, are the phone’s two buttons. The power/sleep fingerprint reader (which is effective) is towards the top, and below it is the volume rocker. This is the opposite configuration to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and, it took some getting used to – I kept pressing the power button when I meant to adjust the volume, although I’m sure that if I spend enough time with the Pixel Fold, hitting the right button will become second nature.
There are microphone and speaker grilles along the top and bottom edges of the phone. Along the bottom is the USB-C charging port (the foldable ships with a cable and even a USB-3-USB-C adapter, but no charging adapter – it feels like something that should be included at this price). There’s also a physical SIM slot, though the Pixel Fold does support dual SIM and eSIM, too.
Google Pixel Fold back showing cover screen and the main camera array. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
A few things stand out when I unfold the Google Pixel Fold. One is that, unless you give it an extra press down on each side, the phone does not automatically unfold completely flat, although this isn’t a big deal, as it’s very easy to nudge it to an essentially flat plain. I remain somewhat surprised by the size of the bezel surrounding the Fold’s flexible main screen. In contrast to the bezel on the Galaxy Z Fold 4 it’s huge; however, once you start using this display, it quickly fades into the background.
There is a reason for the big bezel: it houses the main screen’s 9MP camera. On the Galaxy Z Fold 4, Samsung chose to put a punch hole in the screen, and maybe that was the right call for a slightly large folding screen – I’m not sure.
As I mentioned earlier, the power button doubles as an effective fingerprint reader, and there’s another biometric security option: you can register your face and unlock it with the Cover screen’s camera. Oddly, though, you can’t unfold the Pixel Fold and use that screen’s camera to unlock with your face; it’s a small but annoying omission on Google’s part.
Google Pixel Fold displays
5.8-inch external screen with a normal aspect ratio
Lovely, large flexible display that’s a good fit for all activities
One of the best things about Pixel Fold’s two screens is that there is zero trade-off between using just the outer cover screen or the expansive main display.
I love that Google went with a full-width 5.8-inch cover display. That’s considerably shorter than the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s 6.2-inch external display, but it’s also almost a half-inch wider – and I can say without reservation that I prefer the Pixel Fold’s wider external screen. Not only is it easier to navigate, but apps like Instagram and TikTok look a lot better on it. The difference in size is better illustrated when you look at the resolutions – where the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s cover display is 2316 x 904 pixels, the Pixel Fold’s OLED is 2092 x 1080.
It’s a pleasingly bright screen both indoors and out, with a promised 1,200 nits of brightness in typical use (the peak brightness is 1,550 nits), and smooth in operation thanks to an adaptive refresh rate (60Hz to 120Hz). I also like that there’s an always-on display option (you have to dig into the settings to find it as it’s not set up by default).
Overall, the cover screen is the display you’ll most often use when on the go. It’s the perfect viewfinder for the main camera array on the back, and the size is, depending on your hand, basically palm-friendly.
The Pixel Fold’s Main Screen being used as the main camera viewfinder (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Of course, there’s a reason you’re carrying around all that weight and girth: the large main screen. Unfolded, this is a 7.6-inch tablet-like display covered in ultra-thin flexible glass and a layer of protective plastic. At 2208 x 1840 it’s got just a touch more pixels/resolution than the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s main screen.
I grew to love this screen. Apps like Google Maps, Netflix, and YouTube, and games like Asphalt 9: Legends, and Call of Duty Mobile look fantastic on it. If you happen to start playing Call of Duty on the big screen, then close the Pixel Fold and try to continue on the cover screen, you may notice that the image is distorted. I was able to fix this by closing the game and restarting on the cover screen – it seems like a a bug that Google could fix with a software update.
In a side-by-side comparison, I did find that the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s main screen is a little brighter. It’s worth noting that the Pixel Fold’s main display does not even match the brightness of the cover display; it’s 1,000 nits as standard, with a peak brightness of 1,450 nits. Still, this is something you’d only notice if you had the two phones and screens side-by-side (as I did).
Like the cover display, the main screen supports an adaptive refresh rate of up to 120Hz. It has the same 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, supports 16 million colors, and offers HDR support (though not HDR10+). it also supports the always-on display.
This being a foldable display, there is a crease that you can both see and feel, but it disappears when you’re using apps, playing games, and watching videos. I did notice that this crease is ever so slightly less prominent than the seam on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4’s main screen.
The Pixel Fold’s main screen in tabletop mode (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google makes good use of the cover display, and of the device’s folding capabilities. If I fold the phone to roughly 45 degrees and set it up like a tent, I can watch Netflix as a full-screen experience on the cover display. If I unfold the Pixel Fold, the show or movie is automatically switched to the main screen.
I did notice that YouTube is not entirely optimized for the Pixel Fold – when I tried to play a YouTube video in Tent mode, it insisted on playing upside down.
Tent mode is a nice way to watch a Netflix movie. YouTube, for now, only plays upside down. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
The main screen also has a couple of nifty mid-fold tricks up its sleeve. I can bend it 90 degrees and set the Pixel Fold up in Tabletop mode. With it, I can watch movies, take a selfie, capture perfectly still time-lapse videos, or, as I did on more than one occasion, conduct hands-free Google Meet video meetings. Try doing that with your regular phone and no tripod.
You can also bend the phone a bit further so the main cameras are pointed and the sky and collect tripod-free night photography.
A big screen also means that I have space for not just one, but two apps. The Pixel Fold is a good multitasker that makes running two apps easy. All I have to do is open one app, like Chrome, then sweep up from the bottom to access the app dock, hold down on a second app like the Camera, and then drag it to the left or right side of the screen. You can resize the split of the two screens but, unfortunately, cannot run a third app. Still, it is useful to be able to have a map open at the same time as your camera viewfinder, especially if you’re hiking and want to capture great shots while not getting lost.
Watching Netflix on the Google Pixel Fold. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google Pixel Fold cameras
Overall excellent cameras
Backed by powerful Google tools
Long exposure mode is a delight
Google Pixel Fold main camera array (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google has been widely praised for the cameras on its Pixel phones, and I think the Pixel Fold also earns those accolades.
Its cameras not only take excellent photos across a wide range of styles, they’re complemented by some of the most powerful on-board image-processing magic in the business. I haven’t had this much fun using a smartphone’s cameras in quite a while.
It’s not just the camera app, or the editing I can do post-shot; the entire suite of camera hardware is strong. And while the Pixel Fold doesn’t beat the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 in every aspect, I don’t think anyone will feel cheated by any single lens.
Here’s the full list of cameras:
48MP f/1.7 wide (rear)
10.8MP ultra-wide f/2.2, 121-degree field of view (rear)
10.8MP telephoto 5x optical f/3.05 (rear)
9.5MP f/2.2 (cover)
8MP f/2.0 (above main screen)
The Pixel Fold camera app (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
By and large, this array matches up pretty well with what’s on the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. The biggest difference is probably the Pixel Fold’s main display camera, which has double the megapixels of the Z Fold 4’s.
What I really appreciate though is the 5x optical zoom (you get just 3x on the Z Fold 4). I love a good optical zoom. Yes, both devices offer their own form of digitally- and AI-enhanced zoom. The Pixel Fold’s Super Res Zoom (up to 20x) is sort of impressive, but as with most of these digital implementations, the images kind of fall apart if you look too closely. Still, I love having an optical image stabilized (OIS) and electronic image stabilized (EIS) 5x zoom in my pocket.
As you can see from my photo gallery further down the page, the Pixel Fold not only takes sharp and bright images, it also maintains excellent color fidelity. These images all look impressively like the real-world subject; nothing is oversaturated beyond nature’s creation. The cameras let you capture subjects from a distance, and also allow you to get up close and personal, courtesy of the Fold’s approximation of macro photography. To be clear, I can’t really get closer than, say six or seven inches, but the effect is like macro, with a blurred background and a tight, sharp focus on the nearby object (see my yellow flowers).
There are a number of cool onboard tricks that can improve your not-so-awesome photos. Photo Unblur can sharpen photos blurred by your wobbly hands (although the camera is fast enough that I had to work to make a blurry photo for my tests). Magic Eraser is here, and it let me easily select and remove a bunch of commuters from one of my photos, as you can see below. The process of selection and removal is not instantaneous – it’s like the Pixel Fold wants to show you how hard it’s working.
Image 1 of 2
Magic Eraser on the Google Pixel Fold automatically selects subjects to remove. (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
It does not get rid of every trace, though (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
My other favorite feature in the Camera app is Long Exposure. This is not night photography. Instead, it’s a much shorter-term exposure that captures some movement while leaving the rest of the photo sharp. When I took a photo of a flowing brook using this setting (the on-screen instructions ask you to hold still for a second), it kept the surrounding rocks in focus while blurring the flowing water. It did the same thing with my fountain shot: the water is blurred, but the fountain and surrounding detail are sharp. I tried it in the train station, and it turned rushing commuters into streaks while, in the background, a man who stood still was clear as day. Again, the process of creating these effects takes a moment, and I wonder if a newer Tensor chip (the G2 is almost a year old, after all), might make quicker work of these operations.
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Google Pixel Fold Long Exposure in the train station (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google Pixel Fold Long Exposure on the street (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google Pixel Fold Long Exposure on the street (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google Pixel Fold Long Exposure with a flowing brook (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google Pixel Fold Long Exposure at a fountain (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
You can shoot a selfie, even in portrait mode, with the 9MP inside camera or the 8MP one on the cover screen, but Google also makes it possible to shoot selfies with the Pixel Fold’s best camera.
First, you unfold the device and then open the Camera app. Below the ‘switch camera’ icon is an option that lets you switch camera display screens. Once you do that, the cover screen becomes the camera viewfinder and, because the Pixel Fold is open, you’re staring at the rear camera array. It’s not the smoothest process, and it’s basically impossible to hold the device this way with just one hand and take the shot, unless you add one more step and set up the gesture-activated timer mode.
To do so, I had to set the timer for three seconds, and then hold up one hand until a yellow box appeared on screen around it, which initiated the timer. I could then lower my hand, and the Pixel Fold would take a perfect selfie.
Complicated? Sure. Useful? Absolutely.
Virtually all flagship phones offer some form of astrophotography, and the Pixel Fold is no different; however the double act of Nightscape photography and Tabletop mode is something special. I was able to set up the phone with the screen folded but not fully closed, so the main camera was pointed at the night sky, and then fiddle with the on-screen settings to get a perfectly still starscape, without the need to hold the phone and try to stand still for six seconds, or use a tripod.
The shot below was taken with the 5x optical zoom and a six-second exposure.
Zoom into this photo if you can to see what seems like a million stars (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Camera samples
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(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
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(Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google Pixel Fold performance and specs
Packs Google’s aging Tensor G2 chip
Perhaps a step behind the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon
12GB of RAM, starts at 256GB of storage
Inside the Google Pixel Fold is the zippy Google Tensor G2, the same chip that powers the Google Pixel 7. This is a capable and powerful mobile CPU, although with a Tensor G3 expected in a few months (maybe in the Pixel 8) we have to wonder why Google’s first foldable didn’t get what’s set be Google’s most cutting-edge silicon.
In general, though, there’s almost no evidence that the chip is slowing anything down. Every game, app, and web operation I performed was smooth and instantaneous. Photo-editing operations and tricks like Long Exposure took a beat to render, though. Perhaps that’s down to the G2, or maybe that’s how long the likes of Magic Eraser and Long Exposure would take on any mobile platform.
The Google Pixel Fold has no trouble running action games (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Google pairs the Tensor G2 with a healthy 12GB RAM and its Titan M2 security coprocessor.
Benchmark scores put the Pixel Fold slightly behind the Galaxy Z Fold 4 and its Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, while gaming benchmarks, specifically the ones that look at frames per second, put it somewhat behind Qualcomm’s latest chips. However, in my gameplay experience across Asphalt 9: Legends and Call of Duty Mobile, I didn’t notice a difference. There was no stuttering or tearing, and everything looked great and was highly responsive, so much so that I was MVP during my first round of Call of Duty.
This is also a 5G phone, though without a test SIM I wasn’t able to test its cellular operations. It also supports WiFi 6e, which means I had fast and reliable connections at home and in the office.
As for audio performance, there are stereo speakers that can go pretty loud – and immersive, thanks to spatial audio support – without any distortion. The three microphones, meanwhile, are so sensitive that when I barely whispered “Hey, Google…” the phone heard me and awaited my instructions.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Google Pixel Fold specs
Google Pixel Fold
Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4
Oppo Find N2 Flip specs
Dimensions (folded):
139.7 x 79.5 x 12.1mm
155.1 x 67.1 x 15.8mm
85.5 x 75.2 x 16.02mm
Dimensions (unfolded):
139.7 x 158.7 x 5.8mm
130.1 x 155.1 x 6.33mm
166.2 x 75.2 x 7.45mm
Weight:
283g
263g
191g
Main display:
7.6 inch (2208 x 1840) OLED
7.6 inch (2176 x 1812) AMOLED
6.8-inch 21:9 (2520 x 1080) 120Hz LTPO E6 AMOLED, protected by UTG
Cover display::
5.8 inches (2092 x 1080) OLED
6.2 inches (2316 x 904) AMOLED
3.26-inch 17:9 (720 x 382) 60Hz AMOLED, protected by Gorilla Glass 5
Chipset:
Google Tensor G2
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1
MediaTek Dimensity 9000 Plus
RAM:
12GB (LPDDR 5)
12GB
8GB (LPDDR5)
Storage:
256GB / 512GB
256GB / 256GB / 1TB
256GB (UFS 3.1)
OS:
Android 13
Android 13
Android 13 w/ ColorOS 13
Primary camera:
48MP, f/1.7
50MP f/2.2
50MP, f/1.8, 23mm, 86° FoV (Sony IMX890)
Ultrawide camera:
10.8MP, f/2.2
12MP f/2.2
8MP, f/2.2, 16mm, 112° FoV (Sony IMX355)
Telephoto
10.8MP f/3.05
10MP f/2.4
Front Camera:
9.5MP f/2.2
10MP f/2.2
32MP, f/2.4, 21mm, 90° FoV (Sony IMX709)
Inner Camera
8MP f/2.0
4MP f/1.8
Battery:
4,727mAh
4,400mAh
4,300mAh
Charging:
30W (wired)
25W (wired)
44W (wired)
Colors:
Porcelain, Obsidian
Gray, Phantom Black, and Beige
Astral Black, Moonlit Purple
Google Pixel Fold software
Android 13
Google knows how to fold
Seamless multitasking
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The Google Pixel Fold can multitask, with apps interacting (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Running the camera alongside another app is no problem (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
Tabletop mode made video conferencing easy (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
What matters here, though, is not the speeds and feeds of this phone but, for me at least, how Google’s first foldable uses Android 13, and the Fold’s small outside and big inside screens, to maximum effect.
Many of Google’s core apps, like Maps, Gmail, Photos, Home, and Drive, have been redesigned for the folding-screen environment (as have some third-party ones like Netflix). Mail, for instance, converts from a single-column experience on the cover screen to a dual column on the main screen that puts your mail list on the left and opens each email in a pane on the right. It’s all smart and, honestly, what you would expect.
Multitasking is a strong suit here. As I mentioned, it’s easy to drag and drop one app to open alongside another on the main screen, although I do wish I could add a third app on top of those two.
When you have two apps open side-by-side you can drag and drop between them. I opened Gmail and Google Photos, and to add a photo to an email I was composing I simply tapped and held my finger on the image until a little thumbnail appeared, then dragged it over to the compose screen on the left. Nothing could be easier.
The best way to describe my overall experience with the Google Pixel Fold software environment is that it was pleasant surprise. Everything looks so good, and works so well together.
Google Pixel Fold battery life
4,727mAh
Laster 15 hours
Supply your own charging adapter
Extreme Battery Saver mode can extend the life a charge, but you do lose the use of some apps and notifications (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
I did what I could to stress-test the Pixel Fold’s ample 4,727mAh battery, pushing screen brightness to max, not letting the screen sleep before 30 minutes had elapsed, and playing action games, watching videos, browsing the web and holding multiple, lengthy video conference calls (colleagues said I sounded good, but looked a little less sharp than I normally do through my MacBook Air (M2) FaceTime camera).
After wirelessly charging the Pixel Fold on my Qi charging base, I grabbed the phone at 7am and used it almost continuously until 10pm when it ran out of juice. I did not, when it prompted me at 10% battery life, let it switch to Extreme Battery Saver mode because that would have paused my apps.
Google Pixel Fold score card
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Attributes
Notes
Rating
Design
Google may have found the sweet spot for tablet-sized foldables
4.5/5
Display
Cover display is shorter than the Galaxy Z Fold 4, but more than makes up for it in width. The main screen is beautiful and the big bezel quickly fades into the background.
4/5
Performance
The Tensor g2 has more than enough performance to satisfy most foldable needs
5/5
Camera
An excellent colleciton of cameras inside and out that take beautiful photos
4/5
Battery
Battery life is solid
3.5/5
Software
Android 13 seems perfectly at home on this dual-display, dual-mode device.
4/5
Value
It’s costly but such is the price of two premium devices in one.
4/5
Should I buy the Google Pixel Fold?
Google Pixel Fold (Image credit: Future / Lance Ulanoff)
I embarked on an entertaining walking tour through New York’s Central Park with a test device, during which I took lots of photos, and carried out an additional five days of testing with my Google-provided Pixel Fold test unit.
I carried the Fold with me every day, and used it as often as possible, including on the train, where I tethered it to my iPhone 14 Pro. I shot photos in a variety of environments and situations, and edited the photos with available tools on the device.
While I spent a lot of time using productivity and information apps on the Pixel Fold, I have to admit that I spent an almost equal amount of time playing games and watching videos. It’s just such a fun device to use – there’s nothing like having a tablet hidden in your pocket.
We ran GeekBench 6 and other benchmarks on the phone at Future Labs, and I combined that information with my anecdotal performance results.
COUDERSPORT, Pa. — Up a winding road that cuts through the Allegheny Plateau, hundreds of amateur astronomers in campers and pickups stream into northern Pennsylvania each spring and summer in search of one thing: stars.
It’s something they can’t get enough of in the halo of light pollution that surrounds most cities. By contrast, Cherry Springs State Park, located about 135 miles northwest of Wilkes-Barre,is one of the very few truly dark sky sites in the entire eastern United States.
Twice a year, in June and September, park officials and local astronomy clubs team up to host “star parties” that draw people from as far away as Florida and Wisconsin. For these amateur astronomers, there’s no replacement for the inky-black skies that reveal what they affectionately refer to as “faint fuzzies” — dim and distant galaxies, star clusters and nebulae.
The weather, however, is always a wild card. Only the third and final night of the June event this year, timed to coincide with the new moon, delivers clear skies. Molly Wakeling is betting that will be enough to capture LDN 1262, a wispy nebula in the constellation Cepheus. She’s hoping to photograph it, something that would be impossible from her home in Dayton, Ohio.
/ Wassana Laisukang
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Wassana Laisukang
Red lamps, used to preserve night vision for observing, are seen on a field at the Cherry Springs Star Party in northern Pennsylvania.
“I do the objects from the dark skies that are hard for me to do from home,” Wakeling says. A quick glance at a dark sky map makes clear why western Ohio is such a challenge for her, and why Cherry Springs is so inviting, even if it means waiting out clouds and rain.
Digital cameras have changed the game
Wakeling is part of a growing trend among amateur stargazers. Traditionally, “visual astronomers” have simply looked through an eyepiece to view objects that are often thousands — or even millions — of light-years away. In recent years, however, sensitive digital cameras have brought amateur astrophotography into its own. Long and multiple exposures collect much more light than the human eye and can then be “stacked” to assemble extraordinary images, as evidenced by Wakeling’s online gallery.
Eric Roth, a past president of the Astronomical Society of Harrisburg, which organizes the annual star party, says 550 people registered for this year’s event, with another 400 on a waitlist. That tops the previous record set in 2022. He says the switch from visual astronomy to astrophotography is “a big-time change” that seems to have really taken off around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Roth considers himself an old-school, through-the-eyepiece “strictly visual astronomer.” But today “it seems like everybody is going now for astrophotography.”
He doesn’t think that is a bad thing. It’s helping pass the amateur astronomy baton to a new generation. “We’re skewing younger than we used to, which is good,” Roth says. He surmises that it’s because the gadgetry of astrophotography appeals more to a younger demographic.
/ Scott Neuman/NPR
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Scott Neuman/NPR
Amateur astronomer Molly Wakeling sets up her telescope and camera equipment to capture an especially faint nebula at the Cherry Springs Star Party in northern Pennsylvania.
Trinna Cuellar, 41, lives in New Jersey and has also recently gotten into astrophotography. She talks about her telescope gear the way some people talk about a prized sports car — citing specs and rattling off lingo.
Cuellar has brought her son, Lev, who is almost 11, to Cherry Springs so he can get his first glimpse of “the galaxy we live in” — the Milky Way, she says.
She was first at Cherry Springs as a child and credits the experience with sparking her interest in astronomy. “My first time here, I think I was 7 or 8 years old,” she says. “We came to see the stars, and I was just blown away.”
A few years ago, at the start of the pandemic, she took the leap into astrophotography.
/ Scott Neuman/NPR
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Scott Neuman/NPR
Skip Bird, a retired science teacher, stands next to his telescope last week at Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania.
“I love the creative freedom,” Cuellar says. “There’s a lot of flexibility in how you put together that final image.”
“I can actually create something that kind of resembles a Hubble image,” she says, referencing NASA’s famed Hubble Space Telescope.
An escape from light pollution
While the dark skies of Cherry Springs benefit all amateur astronomers, with filters and other workarounds, astrophotographers can mitigate some of the light pollution issues they experience at home. For visual astronomers such as 69-year-old Wayne Petko, though, dark skies are a must.
That’s why he’s been coming to Cherry Springs from his home in New Jersey for the past quarter-century — and not just for star parties but for new moons throughout the summer, when there’s usually 50 to 100 other enthusiasts on the observing field with him, he says.
/ Scott Neuman/NPR
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Scott Neuman/NPR
Wayne Petko, who lives in New Jersey, has been coming to observe under the exceptionally dark skies at Cherry Springs for a quarter-century.
Petko belongs to the New Jersey Astronomical Association, whose observatory is at a state park situated west of New York City and about 40 milesnorth of Trenton, where “there’s been a gradual upswing in light pollution.”
In fact, Petko’s observation about an upsurge in light pollution is backed by data. A study published earlier this year in the journal Science indicates that on average, the night sky has gotten nearly 10% brighter each year from 2011 to 2022.
That would probably come as no surprise to Stephen Alba, who lives “15 minutes from Newark Airport,” where the stars are hidden by a hazy glow. He, his wife and young son arrived at the Cherry Springs party without a truck full of complicated astronomy gear — just a simple pair of binoculars.
“We want to see the Milky Way,” Alba says, smiling. “We’re just here to experience it.”
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
Camping at the Cherry Springs Star Party (2022)
Cherry Springs State Park Map
