Venus and Mars have been in the evening sky most of this year.  Mars is just about to end its long apparition centered around its excellent opposition in Pisces in October 2020, while Venus is in the midst of a long evening apparition that will continue until January 2022 when it will go through inferior conjunction.  This view was obtained from an unusual location.  I spent a week in Big Bend National Park observing some of the Herschel 400ii objects, and on the last evening there I captured the planets just about to set behind the west end of the northern wall of the bowl in the Chisos Basin on July 10, 2021.  Unannotated image