A Photo of My Girlfriend, the Lunar Eclipse, Mars, and the Milky Way

I normally love to plan my photos and I would have liked to plan a cool shot with yesterday’s moon eclipse. However, when I planned my current trip to Kyrgyzstan, I didn’t realize I would be there with the lunar eclipse of 2018 (bad planning, I know).

I’m staying at the capital of Kyrgyzstan Bishkek. Without a plan, I just went out to a random place out of the city to see the blood moon. I brought my 400mm but I couldn’t really find a cool composition or foreground because the moon was so high up in the sky. The full eclipse was visible at 1:30 am here.

What I did notice though, was the extremely bright star just below the moon when the eclipse happened. It wasn’t a star at all — it was Mars.

Also, because of the darkness of the eclipse, the Milky Way was easily visible. So I decided to do something different than all the crazy telephoto shots of the moon eclipse. This is a shot at 15mm in which you can see the lunar eclipse (red moon), the extremely bright “star” Mars (orange), and the Milky Way next to hit. I asked my girlfriend to pose in the middle. It was a beautiful sight!

The photo is a single exposure with the Sony a7R III and Laowa 15mm f/2 FE at f/2, 20s, ISO 3200.

About the author: Albert Dros is an award-winning Dutch photographer. His work has been published by some of the world’s biggest media channels, including TIME, The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, and National Geographic. You can find more of his work on his website, or by following him on Facebook and Instagram.