Comet, Venus, Moon and Sleeping Cities

In the morning of 2020 July 17, I drove up to Bakacak Peak in Uludag National Park. Bakacak has good views of Bursa down below on the plains, thanks to its 1730-meter elevation. I aimed to catch the close conjunction of the Moon and Venus with Aldebaran nearby, while Comet Neowise was rising in the northeast. The comet was better visible in the evening sky and its return in the morning was during twilight. The sky was clear and transparent, which brough a really colourful twilight. So, I was able to photograph this panorama of the horizon from north to east, with Big Dipper, Neowise, Auriga, Taurus; while Little Dipper, Perseus and Aries shine higher in the sky. In the foreground are lights of eastern half of Bursa; hometown of mine and 2.5-million others. Much farther, about 100 km away, lights of another city can be seen on the horizon under Neowise. This is none other than Istanbul, a metropolis of 16 millions.

The second image is an all-sky 360 panorama I photographed a few minutes earlier. As Neowise and Venus-Moon pair was rising in the east, Mars was shining high in the southeast, while Saturn and Jupiter were closer to setting in the soutwest.