Full Harvest Moon: How to Photograph Tonight's 'Supermoon'

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Are you quick to capture the " supermoon " tonight ? This evening , the moon will be at its effective — in its full phase angle and at its closest point to Earth . If you have a tv camera ready , it ’s a prime opportunity to capture a brilliant lunar spectacle .

Tonight ’s moon is the last of three back - to - back " supermoons " seeable in the Northern Hemisphere this summer . It is known as the Harvest Moon since it is the full moon near the September equinoctial point this year , accord to Space.com .

Full Moon from the International Space Station

A member of the Expedition 40 crew captured this photo of a full moon from the International Space Station.

The moonlight will reach its full phase tonight at 9:38 p.m. EDT ( 0138 GMT ) . To keep tonight ’s supermoon — the last one until Sept. 28 , 2015 — television camera company Canon Inc. , has released a few tips to make it easier for aspiring astrophotographers to get prime shots of Earth ’s closest celestial neighbour . [ In Photos : Glitzy Images of a Supermoon ]

Here are some tips to keep in brain when photograph the moon :

There are other ways to improve your photograph of the moonlight . For illustration , you’re able to manually change the shutter speed ( the exposure sentence ) , the aperture ( the opening that controls how much lighting fail into the lens ) and the ISO , or the sensibility of the camera ’s photo cell , Jason Mrachina , a professional photographer based in Des Moines , Iowa , secernate Live Sciencein a previous tale .

total lunar eclipse against the night sky

Here are Mrachina ’s urge mise en scene :

Tripod

Handheld

An illustration of a full moon with a single flower blossom

Mrachina also recommend taking pictures from a dark domain far from light befoulment , and standing a curt distance away from an aim , such as a fencing , that can create a silhouette in front of the Sun Myung Moon .

an illustration showing the moon getting progressively darker and then turning red during a total lunar eclipse

An image of the full moon surrounded by pink blossoms

A photo of the �blood moon� hovering above Austin in March, 2025.

Gemini meteor shower 2018 over lake in Erenhot, Inner Mongolia, China.

Mars in late spring. William Herschel believed the light areas were land and the dark areas were oceans.

The sun launched this coronal mass ejection at some 900 miles/second (nearly 1,500 km/s) on Aug. 31, 2012. The Earth is not this close to the sun; the image is for scale purposes only.

These star trails are from the Eta Aquarids meteor shower of 2020, as seen from Cordoba, Argentina, at its peak on May 6.

Mars� moon Phobos crosses the face of the sun, captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover with its Mastcam-Z camera. The black specks to the left are sunspots.