For the first time, the Earth and 7 planets appear in the same image

Photo: Instagram/Josh Dury

The image by British astrophotographer Josh Dury, 27, shows Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, Venus, Neptune and Mercury aligned in a rare parade of planets for the first time since 1982.

While NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft captured the entire solar system in one image from space, cameras on Earth have only recently become advanced enough to take pictures from the ground.

This means that Mr. Dury's photo is likely the first to capture all seven planets aligned.

"Seven (or maybe eight) is an achievement that, to my knowledge, has never been achieved before," Live Science quoted the British photographer as saying via email on February 28. If you include the ground representing the Earth in the photo, it can be said that all eight planets of the solar system appeared in one photo.

Expert Dury captured the historic photo just after sunset on February 22 from The Mendip hills of Somerset (UK).

Astronomers define a planetary alignment as a phenomenon in which more than two planets appear on the same side of the sun. The number of planetary alignments can range from three to eight. And the event of five planets appearing together occurs more often than the number of six planets.

However, the rarest event is the event of 7 planets lining up. The next time this phenomenon occurs is in 2040.