How to take this photo?

I want to take a photo with a long exposure that lasts from sunset to sunrise. What setting's should I put my camrea on and could this even work? I have a Nikon D3100.

1) YOU CAN'T

simple as…

you could do time lapse…

multiple photos…

but not one long one…

You can; wait for the night, place the camera on a tripod at a lonely surrounding, point up to the stars, set aperture about 16 not at the closest, set the lowest iso, use a cable release, shutter in B and go to sleep. You'll get a star track

It's possible, but you would need a tripod (of course), and a lot of and filters to cut the light down to a very very low level, what you would get is an image with nothing that moves recorded, trees swaying in the breeze would record as a blur, people and cars wouldn't be there long enough to record at at all, the Suns path through the sky would be a bright line (more than likely burnt out) that's if there were no clouds which would just merge into an uninteresting 'milky' blur. Working the exposure out would be a nightmare, and very hit and miss, more miss than hit. It is possible, but whether it's actually worth doing - who knows.

Time lapse is a better option as then you see what happens during the time frame, as is long exposures at night, moonlight looks very strange and you get the star trails.

Noise can be a problem with sensors getting warm over the long exposure, not all cameras allow an infinite time for a 'B' setting because of this.

The best type of camera for this kind of thing is a manual 35mm film SLR. No batteries going down, Bulb or Time mode to hold the shutter open, and the reciprocity failure of film all work in your favor for long exposure experiments.