Planets align and the clouds clear! The last I saw of these 3 heavenly bodies was 3 nights prior. I really was having my doubts I'd get to see them on this night, when they were to be the closest together. Moon is pretty obvious, Venus is on the bottom and Jupiter is above it. Anyway, I tried 3 nights ago from home and got some so so pictures of the two planets, since the moon had not yet joined them. The next night was clouds. The next night had hope and even the hope of getting them with falling snow showers. I tried, but not luck...too many clouds. So I wake up this day to blue skies. I think, yay the clouds are gone. I then get online and pull up a satellite image. Oh crap, I'm in a clear hole which is about to come to an abrupt end. I spent the rest of the day refreshing satellite loops trying to figure if it would clear or not. That and trying to figure out where to go on this best night(given a view). My thoughts were, a big cross thingy in town, downtown Omaha, the north Omaha power plant with steam, or some view above I-80 where it runs southwest. I call up fellow chaser Randy Chamberlain who lives in sw Omaha. I mentioned those ideas and asked if he knew of any places above I-80 down there that would work. He did. After talking with him about the bridge(no exits at it....just a bridge from a gravel road) I get on Google Earth and find them all and which way the interstate would run. I then looked up the planets and moon on a sky chart on weather underground, to see what angle they would be and when. I meet him down there around 5pm. I had 3 bridges written down and the angle I-80 ran there. First one was wsw, next was sw, then next was wsw again. Well we looked at the preferable sw one but lovely power lines right in the shot over I-80 shot down that idea. The other was a bit low, so back to the first one. The sun was now down and we still had clouds, but I was pretty sure they'd erode further as the heating let up and drier air to the west worked on that side. Poof, and we were set with clear skies. Ok, I wasn't completely sold we'd be set, probably 50/50 at the time. It was bad cloud cover only 1-2 hours before sunset.

The cop showed up sometime around now I imagine, lol. He was fairly cool with what we were doing though. Several cars had used the bridge while we were there, but could obviously see what we were doing with the cameras and tripods out. I guess the person calling us in was someone travelling below. So after the cop left, the rest of the night was pretty much trying to stay hidden when shooting on the bridge, just so no one else called us in. This meant me leaving off my very light colored jacket. I had coveralls on, bib ones anyway. It was 20 by the time we left, so it was rather cold. It wasn't bad except for my hands/fingers. I was constantly changing the shutter/aperture or ISO, as well as moving the cold tripod around. I somehow managed to reach a new threshold for coldest fingers ever. Probably due to how long we were out there and not really moving around doing anything. That and being too skinny I guess. My body just sucks the heat away from my hands and feet. It was worst during the best part when it finally got down lower. I could not spin the wheel on my camera. Couldn't feel it either. I finally had to stick them under my shirt and under my arm against me. Holy hell that sucked. I just about couldn't force myself to do it, since they were just about the same temp as ice. Then right after I did, they did something strange I've never had happen before. They quickly felt wrinkled like they would if they were in water too long. But after doing that for a couple minutes I was set again. We'd been standing out there screwing around for almost 3 hours at that point. Anyway, that is the majority of the story. Here are the images. Many are shot from the side as we didn't want to be seen and called in again up there. Not that we'd get in huge trouble or anything, since the cop was half fine with it. We just didn't want to have to leave as the moon finally lowered above the interstate. A person really does stick out up there on that one. The westbound traffic is coming over and then down a hill behind us, so their lights are right on you. That and the angle worked better over there for some lenses as the moon wasn't over I-80 yet.

The cop probably showed up around now, since there's a pretty big lightness change by the next one on here. We talked to him a bit then waited over on the side a while longer after he left us there.

It took about 20-30 seconds for cars to go under us and then crest that hill. So if you wonder what the shutter length is, that's sort of a guide. Usually when I did shorter ones they were 1-2 seconds. That and many were 10-15 seconds.

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