Tonight, as you may have heard, is the largest and brightest full moon of the year . This is thanks to the fact that the moon is near perigee, the closest point in its elliptical orbit to Earth. Tonight's moon will be about 14 percent wider and 30 percent brighter than lesser full moons, according to Space.com. And you can't miss the brilliant, reddish "star" near the Moon: It's actually the planet Mars, which made its closest approach to Earth (60 million miles) in more than 2 years on Wednesday; it won't be closer until 2014. Tonight it's "at opposition," opposite the sun in the sky and visible all night.

Taking a picture of the Moon can be a challenge. It's difficult to get a good photo of even a normal full moon because its intense glare tends to wash out detail, especially in brighter areas of its surface. (At a full moon, the Earth is located between the sun and moon, and sunlight is reflected straight back at us, with no shadows to provide contrast.) How to counteract this depends on the type of camera you're using.

If you have a point-and-shoot that doesn't allow you to set exposure length, you'll want to make sure the camera's flash is enabled. Obviously, this isn't to illuminate the moon; using the flash keeps the exposure time very short. You'll want to use the highest optical zoom setting the camera allows; be sure to disable digital zoom (which I don't recommend ever using). Set the ISO to low; 80 or 100 if there's a numerical setting. If your camera has an "infinity" setting (with a mountain icon) for distance, choose it. (Most point-and-shoots are limited to "macro" (the flower icon) and "normal" when in automatic mode, but some will add infinity if you switch to manual.)

For a DSLR, you'll want to use a telephoto lens. Either image stabilization or mounting the camera on a tripod can help minimize blurring--a telephoto lens will magnify not only the moon but the effect of any motion or jostling of the camera--but they're not essential if the exposure is short enough. Without tripod or IS, you may want to boost the ISO to 400 or more (as high as it will go without introducing obvious noise) so you can take a very short exposure without it being too dark. Try anywhere between 1/250 and 1/1000 seconds, and shorten or lengthen the exposure if it's too bright or too dim. (I take a series of images of various exposure length.)

Once you've downloaded your moon photos to your computer, you may want to edit them in Photoshop or another image editor. You'll probably want to start by cropping out much of the black background. Then try manually adjusting brightness and contrast until your image is to your liking. I tend to reduce the saturation, as in reality the moon is relatively colorless (though it appears orange when near the horizon). Judiciously applying sharpening to an image can do it a world (moon?) of good. Most effective is the "unsharp mask" that you'll find in Photoshop as well as some other programs.

I took the photo that accompanies this article last night (January 28), using a Canon Digital Rebel XTi and image-stabilized telephoto lens at 300mm. The exposure was 1/1000 second at f/5.6 and an ISO of 200. I edited the image in Photoshop.