Fixed Tripod - Wide Angle Lens Twilight Scenic Twilight scenes of the Moon and bright planets are very easy to photograph. Exposures are short, so tracking is not required. Put the camera on a sturdy tripod and use manual exposure mode. Focus the lens on infinity. Compose your shot. Lock up the mirror, and then open the shutter with the self-timer to reduce vibrations. Shoot plenty of frames, varying the exposure a lot. If you can put something interesting in the foreground, or background, it will make the picture that much better.

The Moon, Mars and Venus are reflected in the still waters of the Mullica River in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey during early morning twilight.

The thin crescent Moon was just three days before new. Earthshine illuminates the "dark" side of the Moon with sunlight reflected off of the daytime side of the Earth. The crescent itself is illuminated by direct rays of light from the Sun, which is to the lower left below the horizon about 29 degrees away.

Mars, near the center of the frame, shines at magnitude 1.2. Venus, at right, shines brilliantly at magnitude -4.4.

This photo was taken on a simple fixed tripod with a 10-second exposure at f/5.6 at ISO 1600 at "magic time". This is the time in the deep twilight when the exposure for the sky matches the exposure for the Earthshine on the Moon.

The secret to getting a photo like this is to arrive early and stay late, shoot a lot of exposures, and "bracket" your exposures. Bracketing means to shoot different exposures around what you think, or the camera meter tells you, is the correct exposure. Since the camera records light differently than we see it in long time exposures, sometimes you can't quite tell exactly when the exposure for the Earthshine will exactly match the sky just by looking at it. Bracketing lets you examine your photos later and pick the one where the exposure was perfect.

I knew this particular alignment of the Moon and Mars and Venus was going to occur because I saw it in a planetarium program. I also knew this particular location would make a very nice setting for it. So I left my observing site a little bit early to get here. I was set up and ready to go just as morning twilight started. I used autofocus to focus on the Moon, and then I turned the autofocus off on the lens, so I could re-compose and the autofocus square in the center of the frame would not try to focus on the blank sky background.

I started shooting and bracketing well before I could see a lot of color in the sky from the approaching dawn, because the camera will record color that is too faint to be seen by the eye in a long exposure. I kept shooting and bracketing until the sky was so bright that there was no Earthshine recorded at all in the short exposures.

I tried several different compositions, shooting some vertically, and some wider. I also intentionally positioned my camera so that the branches of a tree framed the scene on the top. After a while, in the later images, I couldn't see the reflection of the Moon, Mars and Venus in the water because those objects rose in the sky.

Image Data

• Lens / Scope: Canon 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 EF-S Zoom IS lens
• Focal Length: 34mm
• F/stop: f/5.6
• Exposure: Single 10-second exposure
• Mount: Fixed tripod
• Guiding: None
• Camera: Unmodified Canon EOS 1000D (Digital Rebel XS)
• Mode: JPEG
• ISO: 1600
• White Balance: Daylight
• In-Camera Noise Reduction: Off
• Filter: None
• Temp: 50F
• Start Time: 4:24 a.m.
• Date: May 22, 2009
• Location: Mullica River, Pine Barrens, NJ
• Calibration: None
• Processing: Standard in-camera JPEG processing.