LANDSCAPE AT NIGHT
Learning to photograph the landscape at night will open up a whole universe of photographic possibilities. Combine your new knowledge with solid preparation, the right gear and good field technique, and you’ll able to photograph the Milky Way, star trails, meteor showers, lunar eclipses, the aurora and the landscape by moonlight.
Preparation begins with deciding what type of night image you want to make, then deciding when and where to go. Regardless of your nocturnal quarry, you’ll have better luck if you get as far away from city lights as possible.
Basic Timing Considerations
The best time to shoot the Milky Way and meteor showers is when the sky is fully dark. The sky reaches its darkest point at astronomical dusk, when the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon, roughly 1.5 to two hours after sunset at the mid-latitudes; it starts to lighten again at astronomical dawn. Both the Milky Way and meteors are quite dim, so you’ll want the darkest possible sky as a background to help these faint objects stand out, which means shooting when the moon is below the horizon.
By contrast, I’ve photographed star trails and the aurora successfully under all phases of the moon. Moonlit landscapes are easiest to shoot under a full moon, and of course, the moon is always full during a lunar eclipse. Sun Surveyor for iOS and
