Jupiter's four bright moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — were the first objects discovered orbiting another planet, and you can photograph them yourself with a phone and a small telescope.

You need a telescope or strong binoculars on a tripod, a phone, and ideally a simple phone-to-eyepiece adapter, which costs very little and makes the whole process far easier. Start with your lowest-power eyepiece for the widest, brightest, most forgiving image.

Point the telescope at Jupiter and centre it first, then attach the phone. Use manual or pro mode, lock focus on Jupiter, and lower the exposure: the phone's auto mode will usually overexpose the planet into a featureless white blob.

Take many frames, not one. Use a short delay timer or remote shutter so your finger does not shake the phone, and shoot a burst of ten or twenty images. Most will be soft, but a few will catch a moment of steady air.

Processing is simple and free. Stack the best frames to reduce noise and sharpen detail, and a little contrast and sharpening can turn a soft snapshot into a pleasing image of Jupiter and its moons.

Once you have the moons, try a time-lapse. Photograph Jupiter at the same time on successive nights and compare the moons' positions: you will see them shuffle along their line as they orbit.

Once you can photograph the moons reliably, watch for shadow transits, one of the finest sights in planetary observing. When one of Jupiter's moons passes in front of the planet, its shadow falls on the cloud tops as a small, sharp black dot that drifts across the disc over an hour or two. Shadow transits are predictable and listed in astronomy guides, so you can plan a session around one. Photographing a transit with a phone takes the same technique as photographing the moons — steady mounting, low exposure, many frames — but the result is far more dramatic: a tiny black spot crossing the giant planet, cast by a moon you cannot even see against the bright disc. It is a reminder that you are watching a real three-dimensional system in motion, not a picture.