Astrophotographer captures 'Parade of Planets' in stunning picture

Josh Dury, an astrophotographer, captured a "Parade of the Planets" in a rare and stunning photo on earlier this week, showing six planets in our solar system together in the predawn sky.

According to Live Science, the image shows Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in alignment. 

Mars and Saturn can be seen clearly near a crescent moon, while the remaining planets were too distant to be seen with the naked eye.

Dury captured the planetary parade on June 1 in the early hours of the morning from The Mendip Hills — a range of limestone hills in the county of Somerset in the United Kingdom.

"I thought no better than to climb Crooks Peak at the unearthly hour of 2am," Dury told Live Science via email. 

"As time passed, it was a really special experience. Being able to see one planet after another rising and being present in my images was fantastic and really encapsulated a sense of perspective of our place within the solar system, let alone the universe."

Such scenes occur when two or more planets appear to be close together in the sky. This is only from the humans' perspective of the cosmos on Earth  while in reality the planets are positioned extremely far apart.

These conjunctions get rarer with each planet added to the chain. 

The three innermost planets — Mercury, Venus and Earth — align closely in the sky every 39.6 years.

For all eight planets to align closely, it would take 396 billion years and won't happen before the sun becomes a red giant, consuming Mercury, Venus and likely Earth in the process, Live Science previously reported.