Heh - revisiting this I realised that this is a quadruple, not just a triple, conjunction involving Mars as well as Mercury, Venus and Jupiter.
I failed to spot it because (duh) I hadn't zoomed in far enough to see Mars.
A few days earlier, the Moon would have also been near this group which puts every one of the major luminaries on one side of the sky with only Saturn left out (near the Sun's summer solstice position over 115° away).
Quadruple conjunctions are even rarer than triples.
--
simon
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