Mars, Saturn and Moon Conjunction Over Bodie's 1937 Chevy August 30

Mars, Saturn and the moon over Bodie's 1937 Chevy on August 30

I wrote a blog post last week about the opportunity to capture the moon, Mars and Saturn on the evenings of August 30 and 31.  This is the shot I planned with +The Photographer's Ephemeris to place them over the rusty 1937 Chevy in California's Bodie State Historic Park.

Moments earlier I had been catching sunset on Main Street, and Mars and Saturn were just becoming visible over the DeChambeau Hotel:

Mars and Saturn become visible to the left of the Moon over Main Street in Bodie 

It's fairly easy to plan for interesting photos to capture these astronomical events if you use any one of a number of astronomy or astrophotography planning applications to anticipate potential compositions.  I mentioned several in my blog post last week:

Plan your moon, Mars, Saturn photo for Saturday / Sunday Nights, Aug 30 / 31 http://t.co/C4ebtUZ9WN #photography pic.twitter.com/l3cj1GeFeB
— Jeff Sullivan Photo (@JeffSullPhoto) August 27, 2014

For The Photographer's Ephemeris, check out the new Web version of TPE, since Google has retired the version of Google Maps used in the prior desktop app.

Only 3 days left for TPE for Desktop Adobe AIR. Switch to the new web app today: http://t.co/Pd263DUOca Please RT to spread the word!
— TPE (@photoEphemeris) August 30, 2014