How do I get rid of the circle on my iPhone pictures?

Is it only on this photo?

Do it appear in any other view on your iPhone?

Wow,I gotta say, that's a cool picture! I really want to go see the Aurora-- only seen the northern lights once, and it was too far south to be too impressive.

I notice in your picture that Vega, the bright star in the constellation Lyra to the left of your circle, also has a ring around it. These are diffraction rings--they're always there in camera images, but the background is always so much brighter that you don't see them. The one around Vega is from the lenses in your phone's camera. You see them in all astrophotography.

The big ring in the center is the same sort of thing, but I'm not sure what caused it. The ring is much bigger around, so the cause is very much smaller than the camera lens. It could even be a tiny bit of dust on the lens. It's so perfectly round, though, that it looks like what is called Newton's Rings, and could be caused by the point at which two curved surfaces, like the lenses, are touching-- I think it's part of the optical system in a camera that's required to be ridiculously small.

Thanks for sharing a great picture!

It's got to be some type of lens flare which resembles the len's configuration. Instead of coming from a single point it's coming from all directions, thus the flare resembles the lens configuration.

You might take the iPhone into your nearest Genius Bar and have them take a look at it and see what they think it is.

stine241 wrote:

Thanks for the respons!

Is there a way to get rid of it? I took the picture yesterday, but it also shows on the pictures i took today. Not as visuable on all the pictures, but its there and its kind of annoying..

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/4e9494da-90d3-490a-8bb7-13eba0a118d5

I looked at the image in Photoshop Elements, manipulated the contrast but could not see the ring in the photo. Were you zoomed in on the Aurora when you told your first posted image? Shoot the same image of the sky next time both zoomed as far in as possible and the no zoom. See if the ring appears on which photo.

I can't see the ring in the picture as posted but could after manipulating the contrast in Photoshop Elements. Your eyes a better than mine, that's for sure.

I'd take the iPhone into Apple and have them check it out. Get an appointment at the nearest Apple Genius Bar.

Diffraction images are extremely faint-- it's probably in the last picture ( I couldn't find it!) but the exposure is very different. The diffraction image is always in the center-- it's not about the picture, it's about the lens system.

I thought this was the same as in the first image:

But it's not as circular as I thought it was.

Did you ever figure it out or take it to an Apple Store?

I get the exact same thing. It’s worse when you use more exposure time, which is needed to get clearer photos of the aurora..It will sometimes show up in other pictures randomly for me..but I 1000 get your frustration. Anytime my exposure goes past 5 seconds it’s there 😔

Well, you can certainly make the picture better-- I used the blur tool in GraphicConverter. Nice Picture! The Retouch tool in Photos may work-- I didn't try. It doesn't solve the problem, though.

Did you (Mint-0) also use an iPhone 15 Pro? If so, that would seem to indicate that it was the camera. Sure looks like Newton's Rings to me. I'd go to Apple. Let us know if they provide any help.