A clear sky in the evening of a lovely April day in 2026 gave me the opportunity of filming this new crescent moon from the relative comfort of my front drive.
As the moon sank towards the horizon, and the sky slowly darkened as twilight faded, the earthshine, that light reflected onto the moon's unlit surface from our planet, became more and more pronounced.
So I watched enthralled at the spectacle, as my camera clicked away beside me, every two seconds, recording the hundreds of still images needed to create just these few seconds of time lapse video.
But what I couldn't make out with the naked eye, but the camera managed to capture, were the few brighter stars surrounding the moon, and I only found out they were there when I processed the images in Adobe Lightroom.
A nice added bonus to a wonderful twenty minutes or so of skywatching.
Filename - moon_earthshine_timelapse_04
Camera - Canon EOS6DMK2
Lens - 100-400mm zoom @ 400mm
Exposure (start of sequence) - 0.8 sec @ f/5.6, ISO100
Exposure (end of sequence) - 0.8 sec @ f/5.6, ISO100
Filters - None.
Music - On the Island - Godmode
Shooting interval - 2 secs
Location - Buckley, North Wales
This clip - HD 720p, 30fps (4K and HD formats also available)
Clip duration - 20 seconds
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2026 unless otherwise stated.