Venus and Aegean Sea

Bright planet Venus appears above the Aegean seaside near Izmir in western Turkey, shortly after the sunset. If you look carefully at this timely image you find three other fainter star-like points which are planets Mars and Mercury and the bright star Spica. Click on the black star-pattern icon above the image to recognize the objects by the guide labels. As noted by the photographer “appearance of all four despite the clouds and near the horizon was a big surprise. Mercury was visible only with binoculars just above a small island and directly below Venus. For this smaller copy of the original picture, I slightly enhanced Mars, Mercury and Spica so they could be better resolved.”