Taken the day before the new moon and partial solar eclipse against a colorful backdrop of morning twilight in Antalya, Turkey, the image shows not only a smiling waning crescent, but also a rare view of the planet Mercury. Mercury is the closest inner planet to the Sun and therefore very difficult to see and detect in the eastern sky. If we look closely at the end of the pier, near the last cabin roof, we can see a bright orange dot.

Taken with the same 200mm lens and from almost the same spot on the pier above the beach, the correct image shows the sky-facing scene. This time we are looking west just two days after the new moon and 30 minutes after sunset.

The aurora can be seen again, but the scene has changed slightly due to the Moon’s position relative to the Sun. The glow of the Earth was first described and drawn by Leonardo da Vinci about 500 years ago in his Leicester Codex; He explained this phenomenon in the early 16th century when he noticed that both the Earth and the Moon simultaneously reflect sunlight.

Light reflects from Earth to the Moon and back to Earth in the form of aurora. Both images were taken in late 2022. The image on the right shows a series of time-lapse images of moonlight passing over the Gulf Mountains and near the Mediterranean Sea last October.