With the Moon out of the way, we can get a longer exposure image of the morning scene, now with Mercury brighter than it was a week ago.  Venus is magnitude -4.03 while Mercury checks in at magnitude -0.19, which means it would be the third brightest star in the night sky behind Sirius and Canopus.  They are both still over 1 1/2° north of the ecliptic.  This view was obtained using the lens set at 70mm, so we are zoomed in considerably compared to the standard 43mm lens view.