On the Internet you can find a photograph of a rare astronomical phenomenon - three planets on the same line exactly above the tops of the Egyptian pyramids. We have verified the authenticity of this photo.
In the picture you can see three pyramids in the Egyptian city of Giza, and above them, in the night sky, three luminaries. It is stated that these are Mercury, Venus and Saturn, and such a phenomenon occurs only once every 2373 years. The photo itself, as the caption in many viral publications states, was taken on December 3, 2012.
Over the years, the photo was distributed in Facebook, X, "VKontakte", Telegram and on other resources. At the end of June 2025, it again gained popularity in the Russian-language segment of the Internet - publication on the website “Peekaboo"at the time of writing, the analysis was viewed by more than 280,000 people, and the post in Facebook shared by more than 2000 users. Previously also spread a retouched version of the same photograph with increased contrast.
In the night sky, in addition to the stars, the inhabitants of the Earth can see other luminaries with the naked eye, including five planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Sometimes several planets line up in a row at once.
If the date of the image—December 3, 2012—is correct, then you can use the tool to simulate it Solar System Scope. It allows you to determine the position of stars at a specified point using a given time and coordinates. To the east and southeast of the Giza pyramids, in the early morning of December 3, 2012, Mercury, Venus and Saturn could indeed be seen close to each other, but from the observer's point of view they were lined up not in a horizontal, but in an almost vertical line. Gradually they moved away from the horizon, and in the afternoon they no longer appeared in sight. At the same time, in the viral photo, as you can see using Google Maps, the camera looks north.
Fact checkers from the AFP agency, who also verified the authenticity of the viral photo, contacted for comment from several astronomy experts. Juan Antonio Belmonte Aviles, a professor at the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands, called the frame impossible - the planets in it are located in a way that would never be visible from Giza from such an angle. “Not to mention, the same brightness of Mercury and Venus is just absurd,” he added. In addition, interlocutors AFP And USA Today noted that three planets can be seen from Earth simultaneously not once every 2373 years, but approximately every year.
Let's look at the photo itself. Reverse image search service TinEye shows that this photo was originally “clean”, without planets. It was in this form that it was distributed back in 2008. The Internet Archive preserves more early versions the same publications dated February 2007.
Mass publication of the same image with planets already added in the photo editor began in 2012, but earlier on December 3. In those posts, of course, the date of the photo was not indicated.
It is not known for certain who was the first to edit the photo of the pyramids by adding planets to it. Fact checkers from AFP assumedthat blogger Charles Marcello did this for his publications dated April 26, 2011. However, analysis archival copies post shows that he added this image later, between August 18 and 19, 2012.
Thus, the viral photo with three planets above the Egyptian pyramids is fake and created based on a real photo in which no luminaries are visible. The very position of Mercury, Venus and Saturn on December 3, 2012 or on another day from the indicated point could not even theoretically be the same as in the picture.
Cover photo: social networks
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