Plan Your Moon, Mars, Saturn Conjunction Photo August 30 & 31

Shooting the moon, Mars and Saturn over Bodie's 1937 Chevy at 9 pm, Saturday August 30, 2014

Last weekend offered the opportunity to shoot the crescent moon near Jupiter and Venus.  Now that the new moon has passed, as the crescent moon moves into the evening sky, we have the opportunity to catch the moon with Mars and Saturn on consecutive nights.  The first night will be August 30, when the moon will be roughly 11 degrees high at 9 pm (here at 38 degrees latitude) as the sky gets dark, near bright star Spica and west of the two planets.  The screen shot from +The Photographer's Ephemeris ("TPE", free on a PC) shows a possible composition shooting over the 1937 Chevy in Bodie State Historic Park.  The park closes after 6 pm, but we're bringing a group in for a night photography workshop, so the crescent moon and planet conjunction event is a nice bonus opportunity for us.

The even tighter and more interesting configuration will be on the following night August 31 when the moon joins Saturn and Mars to form a close triangle.  At 9 o'clock for mid-northern latitudes the moon will be southwest and roughly 17 degrees high, moving westward and setting over the next hour.

To plan some shots for this celestial event, you can use apps such as The Photographer's Ephemeris, +PhotoPills , StarWalk and Sky Safari+:

• PhotoPills: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photopills/id596026805?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC
• The Photographers Ephemeris: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-photographers-ephemeris/id366195670?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC
• StarWalk:  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-walk-5-stars-astronomy/id295430577?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC
• SkySafari 4+: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skysafari-4-plus/id766939884?mt=8&uo=4&at=10ldnC

StarWalk Screen showing conjunction August 31

Here's a screen shot from the StarWalk app showing the relative positions of Mars, Saturn and the moon. (The appearance of them on the screen is not to scale.)  Using this app to see the relative position of the three objects, then using TPE or PhotoPills to pick natural landmarks on the horizon or man-made objects in your foreground to place them over, you can plan for some interesting compositions well in advance.  A wide shot to capture a foreground subject might work well at 14-24mm, while a telephoto composition might range from 50 mm to 200mm.  You can capture individual planets or the moon at longer focal lengths.  I may use my crop sensor Canon 70D to get an extra effective 1.6X magnification, so my 70-200 mm lens with 2X teleconverter shooting at 400 mm will produce an effective 640 mm.

Saturn over Mars (upper right)

You can scout potential locations for your shot all week, just look for the red light of Mars to the southwest as darkness falls, in the evening about an hour after sunset, and Saturn is the bright planet just to the right of Mars.  This is a location I scouted and ruled out earlier this week due in part to excessive light pollution just out of frame to the right.  Mars is the red planet in the upper right (and even easier to see in the reflection), while Saturn is just to the right.  The crescent moon between and above them will make a tight grouping, so I should bring my Canon 50 mm f/1.4 and 85 mm f/1.8 lenses to be able to use wider apertures and lower ISO settings for less noisy results.

A handy planning site for the Moon, Mars, Saturn conjunction event on August 31 tries to recognize your location to be able to give accurate times for visibility of Saturn in the evening, as well as set times for Saturn, the moon and Mars: http://in-the-sky.org/news.php?id=20140831_15_100

Photos of the Moon, Venus and Jupiter Conjunction August 23

Jupiter, moon and M44 Beehive Cluster rising yesterday, August 23.  A short while later Venus joined them, below Jupiter.

The Internet, mobile phones and social media can provide some interesting opportunities at times.  I learned about a close Venus - Jupiter conjunction coming up on August 18 from the SkyWeek+ app from +Sky & Telescope.  I looked up more information, and found an excellent planning guide by +Universe Today.  I shot the August 18 conjunction, only to have Universe today include it moments later in their write-up on the event!  I looked up more articles, discovering a mention in an +EarthSky article of the moon joining them in the sky on the morning  August 23.  But there would be a nice practice day August 22, which I shot.  As it turned out, EarthSky included my Aug 18 Venus - Jupiter image in an excellent planning guide to the August 23 event.

Venus, Jupiter, moon and Beehive Cluster in conjunction 

I checked my app The Photographer's Ephemeris to confirm a good composition for the moon rise angle at Mono Lake.  I then checked the StarWalk app and determined that the last of the three celestial bodies rising on the 23rd,Venus, would be rising at 4:53 at Mono Lake.  So I arrived onsite yesterday at around 4:30, I was moving my cameras into position around 4:45, and I was just getting my exposures settings set as the moon rose next to Jupiter and its moons (above).  Venus was the next to arrive (right), and its light was colored bright red in the atmosphere choked with smoke from fires in the American West.

Apparently no other photographers had planned to shoot here, although one car did pull in and leave its headlights on briefly, providing some unplanned light painting on the tufa-strewn shoreline.  The sky gradually brightened as twilight "blue hour" progressed, and the view of the moon became more clear and it tone more white as it rose above the densest slice of atmosphere.  Venus increased in apparent brightness as it rose, and hints of the approaching sunrise could be seen on the horizon.

Venus, Jupiter and moon during blue hour

As the planets and moon rose together, I had to zoom out to a wider 70 mm focal length to fit them in comfortably.  Incresed color in the sky was offset by the relative fading of the planets as the sky brightened.

Later this week we'll have this sort of opportunity all over again as the crescent moon yields to the new moon, then becomes a crescent again as it switches to the night sky, and moves close to Mars and Saturn.  I'll talk more on that in a following post here on my blog, and I'll post updates on Twitter (@jeffsullphoto) as well.

The moon, Jupiter and Venus as dawn approaches on August 23

To the right is one of my last shots of the moon with Jupiter and Venus last Saturday as the sky continued to brighten.

Update June 2017: My photo has been published as the lead photo in an article in the August 2017 Sky and Telescope Magazine by Don Olson. A description of Don's investigation into a poem by Lord Byron appears on the Texas State university Web site, along with a copy of this photo:
'Celestial Sleuth' identifies Lord Byron's stellar inspiration www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2017/June...

Venus - Jupiter Conjunction at Dawn Today

Venus and Jupiter put on a show in the sky this morning as sunrise approached.  As seen from earth these two bright planets appeared to pass within 0.3 degrees of each other in the sky.

For the next shot I used a crop sensor camera to get a little more effective zoom out of my lenses:
Canon 70D, 70-200mm f/4 IS L lens, 2X teleconverter
400mm focal length x 1.6 crop factor = 640mm equivalent

I uploaded one of my shots to Flickr, and +Universe Today had already blogged it moments later.  Thanks +Nancy Atkinson!

Spectacular Venus-Jupiter Conjunction Graces the Dawn http://t.co/B8EGvM8gOl @universetoday #astronomy #space #news pic.twitter.com/YsAqbwFfKh
— Jeff Sullivan Photo (@JeffSullPhoto) August 18, 2014

Here's a link to the blog post by Universe Today:

"Astrophotos: Spectacular Venus-Jupiter Conjunction Graces the Dawn" http://t.co/ZpfYKZObWT pic.twitter.com/h58ORw48UM
— Universe Today (@universetoday) August 18, 2014

Venus, Jupiter, Mercury Conjunction (1080p, 30fps)

The planets Jupiter, Venus and Mercury are close together in the evening sky this week, so every night I've been trying to capture them together on the horizon in the twilight hours before they set. The first night the clouds were too thick. The second night I was shooting sunset in high winds at Mono Lake with the Sierra Nevada as a high western horizon, so I caught a few pictures of the planets, but they set too quickly to capture a time-lapse video. The third night was just right, relatively clear to the west, I was in a high shooting position with an apparent horizon lower than my position (less than 0 degrees elevation), and fortunately that was Sunday May 16, the night when they'd be closest together, forming a tight triangle.

There was still wind to deal with so I changed position a few times to minimize it. I could only use one camera because I had loaned my daughter one of my quick release plates the day before and it was still on her camera back home. There wasn't a lot of light and I was shooting with a 2X teleconverter on my 70-200mm lens at close to 310mm, so my aperture was limited to f/8, forcing me to bump up the ISO to minimize shutter speed in that wind. Fortunately I worked out all the trade-offs in time to capture about four hundred frames, enough to create this time-lapse video. 

Here's how my four days of effort to capture this event turned out:

May 24 from Lake Tahoe

May 25 from Mono Lake

May 26 from Monitor Pass

May 27 from Lake Tahoe