A former Administrator of NASA, Tom Paine, used to make the joke that the last time this happened Thomas Jefferson was president and he blew it.

Great picture. The full story behind it is here and is more involved than just getting the camera set correctly.

The panorama was taken from Somerset’s Mendip Hills on Saturday by Josh Dury, 27, an award-winning astronomical photographer dubbed the “Starman”.

Mr Dury said: “It is made of nine images, revealing Saturn, Mercury and Neptune….They were very tricky to spot. I used multiple image analysis and astronomy apps to confirm their location.”

I suppose you could say that Mr Dury “cheated” in combining many images into one but that’s also true of much of the astronomy pictures we see today, and has been the case with large telescopes like Hubble for decades now.

It’s just that advances in computer power, software technology and cameras have enabled the amateurs to almost be at the same level.

The rare image was made possible because a “great planetary parade” is taking place this week for the first time since 1982 – when cameras were not advanced enough to capture them all.

I vividly recall seeing all the visible planets lined up one summer’s evening in late ’81 or early ’82, and knowing that this was the reason for the launching of the Voyager spacecraft in 1977, where they could use the gravity of Jupiter to slingshot themselves to Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Of course that planetary alignment happens only once every 175 years – hence the joke related above by the head of JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who built Voyager), Professor Bruce Murray. Both he and the man who discovered the alignment, Professor Gary Flandro, are seen talking about it in the episode, Giants, from the wonderful late 90’s BBC TV series, The Planets.

The next such “planetary parade” as this one won’t happen until 2040. I count myself lucky to have seen two in my lifetime.