Caption: An image of the Total solar eclipse of 2008 Aug01 taken in Novosibirsk, Siberia, Russia.

Note that the sky is NOT dark and there is quite a bit of horizon light for some reason, perhaps from city lights of Novosibirsk. I think the image is high-sensitivity in order to show a lot of corona around the Sun.

Stretching away from the Sun to the upper left is the ecliptic on which nearly are seen Venus and Mercury which is only about 1/4 of the distance from the Sun as Venus and much fainter.

Venus and Mercury are inferior planets, and so must always be close to the Sun on the sky. Venus' maximum greatest elongation is ∼ 47° (see Wikipedia: Venus: Observability) and its orbital inclination to the ecliptic is 3.39458°. Mercury's maximum greatest elongation is 27.8° (see Wikipedia: Mercury: Observation) and its orbital inclination to the ecliptic is 7.005°. The different orbital inclinations of the two inferior planets are why they are NOT on the same line.

Finally, at the about the distance from Venus as Venus is from Mercury one does NOT (but one person claims one should) see Saturn as a faint red dot. As Saturn is an outer planet, it can have any angle with respect to the Sun on the sky. It probably has to be farther away than the Sun in spatial distance to be as close to the Sun in angle as it is claimed to be in this image.

Credit/Permission: © Michael 2008 (uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by User:High Contrast, 2010) / Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.
Image link: Wikimedia Commons: File:Solar eclipse of 2008 August 1st in Novosibirsk, Russia.jpg.
Local file: local link: solar_eclipse_annular.html.
File: Eclipse file: solar_eclipse_total_2008aug01.html.