to help fill the time during lockdown, yeah? i've been very busy colouring in with my eight—year—old. 0h, lovely! so she's got her colouring—in book and you've got an adult colouring—in book and you sit next to each other, do you? no! i only do the children's ones because i think the grown—up ones are too fiddly! anyway, what have you been up to? chuckles. well, let me tell you, you know those amazing photos of the stars in the night sky that you can get by taking a long exposure photo? well, i've kind of been getting into that, and it turns out that astronomy as a whole has become a much bigger deal in the last year. i suppose it's something you can do in your back garden when you're on your own and can't go out. exactly! so you might think that you'd need a big dslr and a telescope to get those kind of shots. but no. turns out you might already have everything you need in your pocket. so i wanted to find out more about this, so i asked tv host, space journalist and author

sarah cruddas to try a bit of astrophotography on her smartphones. it was looking up at the night sky as a child which inspired my lifelong love of space. but whereas in the past, capturing images of the night sky required expensive kit, now all you need is the latest smartphone, a bit of luck with the weather and enough time to set up before it gets dark. the latest generation of smartphones have a few low—light tricks up their sleeves to make getting those insta—worthy night sky photographs a lot easier. i'm testing out four of the latest smartphones. we've got the huawei mate a0 pro. the samsung s21. this google pixel 5. my iphone 12 pro max. and as for this, don't worry about it just yet!

because we'll be taking long exposure photographs, the most important extra you'll need is a tripod to hold your phone steady. and the other really important thing is to go find somewhere that doesn't have too much light pollution. you can always have a look online for dark sky recommendations near you. then all you need to do is wrap up warm and wait for night to fall. in fact, you might not have to wait until it's fully dark before you get your first shot. if it's up at dusk, it's actually easier to shoot the moon against a blue sky rather than a black one — that way, your phone won'tjust turn it into a white blob while trying to compensate for the incredibly dark sky. often when you think of astronomy, you think of expensive kit. but to be honest with you, if your phone isn't enough, if you want to get slightly closer to these astronomical objects, you need a pair of these, not a telescope. i'm such a fan of binoculars — they're lightweight, you can carry them around, you can take them wherever

you want to be and it involves less setting up and literally, it is a case of holding your smartphone up to the binoculars to get that perfect shot. there we go, i've got it. it is a bit tricky but if you want to get really close—up pictures of the moon, it might be worth listening to a proper pro. a problem with trying to attach your camera or get your camera in the right place to look down the eyepiece of a telescope is holding the camera nice and steady over the eyepiece. so there are now devices — in fact, i've got one here, there we are — it's like a little clamp. this bit clamps over the eyepiece of the telescope and your phone fits in here. which is brilliant, because you can keep it really rock steady on the eyepiece and then concentrate on the picture. it is, as you can probably tell, insanely dark. of course you're going to need a torch, but so that you don't

dazzle yourself or ruin your night sky vision, here's a top tip for you — use a red light. in fact, it's so dark that we have chosen to record this entire film using a sony a7s mark iii, which has very impressive low—light credentials. it's a full moon but apart from that, we have only used an artificial light for a handful of shots — we'll tell you which ones on—screen. just look at how much our normal tv camera struggles in comparison. 0k, time to see what these phones can do. camera clicks. this is the iphone 12 pro max. it's not bad for starters. and here's another tip — if you are worried that pressing the shutter button will wobble the phone, you can get a very cheap bluetooth remote clicker like this one, or you can even use the volume control on your headphones as a remote shutter button. the iphone and samsung don't have specific astrophotography modes, so i'm going to go into full professional mode on the s21 and set a long exposure going.

and the result is... oh, wow! wow! do you know what? i even need to do slightly less exposure. it looks — to be honest with you, it looks like a nuclear bombs gone off, it is so bright! if you play around with the settings, you can get some really lovely shots, but the next two phones remove the trial and error with full astrophotography modes. hold still for two minutes and 48 seconds. the google pixel 5 decides for itself how long it needs to run for. and for this shot, i'm also using one of pete's other photography tips. if you take pictures of stars with no context around them, they are just dots in your photo. there's nothing better than actually putting in a bit of artistic composition and adding in foreground objects because it gives everything a beautiful context. this is incredible! it's a really, really bright, really powerful image — i would say of the night sky but it almost looks like daytime — and ifeel like i'm a professional

photographer, even though i'm just using a setting on a smartphone. one thing to bear in mind is when the moon is full, the brightness will make photographing stars rather difficult. we actually got some better shots a few nights later, before the moon was up. and now to the huawei mate pro 40, which has something called light painting mode. this simulates a very long exposure shot by taking one photo every few seconds and stacking them together. the results are stunning. and itjust makes you realise that we are on this object that is moving, that is hurtling through space, you know, because you see how far the stars have moved. i think that's the best astrophotography picture i've ever taken with a phone, if i do say so myself! it is quite incredible, really. i'm really impressed with the phones but now, i'm going to try something

that is comparatively out of this world. the stellina telescope uses the same technique of stacking lots of images, but on a very different scale. it's been designed in consultation with astronauts and former nasa astronaut terry virts is a telescope's brand ambassador. the stellina is kinda like being in space because you can see the planets and pick them out in space but they're just small dots. and the stellina optics are sort of the same — it doesn't have a big zoom lens that really zooms in to planets. but what stellina does let you do is see these deep sky objects, and in space it was kind of the same thing — you can't zoom in with your eyes on the planets but you can see these giant clouds of hydrogen in the milky way, or you can see nebula with your eyes. once powered up, the stellina orientates itself by looking around for familiar stars and constellations and the accompanying app will give you a list of deep sky objects to choose from.

so we've got to choose from the m13 galaxy, m51, m82, sombrero galaxy, double cluster. let's do m13, the hercules cluster. it will then track the chosen object across the sky, building up an image which it sends direct to your smartphone. do you know, i've done astronomy since i was five years old — i remember i had a little children's pair of binoculars — but this is the most high—tech thing i've ever seen. i've done it! so this is my photograph — it's taken it for ten minutes — of the hercules cluster. you can't even see this object in the night sky, and this image has brought up not only the cluster but more stars than i can see with my own eyes. it's — it's really incredible to think how much technology has evolved since galileo looked up with his telescope all those centuries ago, and now we have these science fiction—like smart devices which you can capture

images of the night sky. in order to get the best pictures, you do need some perseverance and patience, but the results really have been worth the cold. sometimes, though, it isjust worth putting your phone down and taking in the majesty of it all as we hurtle through the universe on our one tiny ball of rock. brilliant! that was sarah cruddas. how amazing were those pictures?! incredible pictures. and it's amazing to see what our smartphones can do that most of us will never actually use them for. right. and over the course of the past year, some people have got into new hobbies. others may have been busy sorting things out around the house, like maybe going through some old photos. and in fact, i have something here that could be very handy for that. this is a gadget for digitising

old negatives, so you can either save them in your phone or you can print them. right. ok, how does it work? it's simple to use but it is a bit fiddly. you've to download the pictoscanner app first and then turn the light on... slip your negative in here. line up your phone camera with the hole, and then you're ready to go. i see, so it's reversing the colours in the image — it's showing you the positive of the negative in a live view, yeah? that's right, then you've just gotta snap it. that is a striking photo, by the way — that's darth maul, if anyone's asking. it is, and it's bright, so it seemed a good one to test as the colours really pop. and after a bit ofjiggling the device about, it works. it's not perfect, but it is largely made out of cardboard and it does only cost 35 quid. is that you under the make—up, by the way?

no! all of my old pictures are way too embarrassing! i think it's you under the make—up. anyway, that is it for the shortcut of click for this week. much more waiting for you in the full—length version, which is on iplayer right now. as ever, you can keep up with the team on social media. find us on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at @bbclick. from me and darth maul, thanks for watching, and we'll see you soon. chuckles. bye— bye. hello. in case you haven't seen enough of it so far this month, yet more rain is pushing across the uk at the moment. in northern ireland we've been seeing some heavy bursts of rain. actually, they are one of the few

places to brighten up today, although there'll still be a showers around as this area of low pressure shunts the rain further east to those eastern parts that are staying dry for a large part of the day, will get in as we go through this evening. so here is the progress of the rain as we get on into the start of the evening as it moves slowly east. it will have some quite heavy bursts in itjust before it begins to clear away, for example, from parts of wales as we get on into the evening. heavy showers following the rain into northern ireland. some hazy brightness to the east before the persistent rain gets in but there'll be a few showers on another really quite cool day and an increasingly windy day along the south coast, round the coast of wales as well, gusts up to around 50 mph or so. so this evening, the rain continues to spread across those areas that have had some dry weather today. before clearing away, though, a wet night in northern scotland. behind the rain, further heavy showers to wales and the south—west. showers easing in northern ireland, the coldest, rural spots here will see a touch of frost going into the morning. now, some places starting sunny

tomorrow, continuing with rain in northern and western scotland pushing down across northern ireland. heavy and perhaps thundery showers spreading east across england and from wales, where we are going to see some hail mixed in with some of these as well, as low pressure is still very close by and it will be into tuesday as well, so it'll stay quite breezy out there monday and into tuesday. the winds coming down from the north or north—west so there's no great warmth in those but there will be sunny spells around, but some heavy and possibly thundery showers from scotland down through northern and eastern parts of england. a few showers elsewhere, the chance for a little rain towards parts of cornwall and devon. the low pressure is beginning to move away as we go into wednesday but still close enough to send down a weak weather front across eastern parts on wednesday with cloud and some outbreaks of rain. there is a chance for catching a shower that could be heavy elsewhere, but fewer showers around. more in the way of sunny spells to come and temperatures on wednesday actually just a degree or so higher if you are away from that cloud and rain towards the east. that is a sign of things to come

as we get on through the rest of the week and into the weekend. pressure will be higher, promising something drier and a little warmer.

this is bbc news. the headlines at seven: two doses of the main covid vaccines used in the uk are found to be highly effective against the indian variant of the virus. belarus forces a ryanair plane with an opposition activist onboard to land in minsk, sparking condemnation from the eu. government ministers deny claims by the former downing street adviser dominic cummings that they pursued a policy of herd immunity in dealing with coronavirus last year. at a time of crisis when government is making very, very tough decisions, difficult decisions, we put public life and protecting the public at the forefront of all those decisions. a mountain cable car has plunged to the ground in northern italy, killing at least 13 people. two injured children have been airlifted to hospital.