A passenger jet ended up being dramatically silhouetted against the fiery surface of the sun in this rare, one-in-a-million photo.

The amazing image, captured by accident by California-based photographer Andrew McCarthy, shows the aircraft appearing like a small, black stamp on the surface of the sun, which glowed a soft red behind it.

The jumbo jet took just a second to fly across the sun - but perfectly intersected the surface of the burning star.

According to reports, McCarthy captured what is believed to be a United Airlines plane flying directly in front of the sun while training his camera on it one afternoon.

McCarthy posts on Instagram via his cosmic_background account and describes himself there as "exploring the universe from a backyard in Sacramento."

McCarthy captioned the image with this: "When you take pictures as often as I do, the likelihood of happy accidents increases. Like this plane interrupting my shot of our sun yesterday afternoon. Completely unplanned, yet it added something to the image that made it uniquely beautiful.

"Take a look at the video of the transit, and notice how the plane is only visible when covering the sun, but the contrails are easily visible regardless. This is due to the contrails scattering the sun’s hydrogen alpha light, which my scope is sensitive to. It creates the illusion of a vanishing plane!"

A passenger jet ended up being dramatically silhouetted against the fiery surface of the Sun in this rare, one-in-a-million photo.

The amazing image, captured by accident by California-based photographer Andrew McCarthy, shows the aircraft appearing like a small, black stamp on the surface of the Sun, which glowed a soft red behind it.

The jumbo jet took just a second to fly across the Sun - but perfectly intersected the surface of the burning star.

According to reports, McCarthy captured what is believed to be a United Airlines plane flying directly in front of the Sun while training his camera on it one afternoon.

McCarthy posts on Instagram via his cosmic_background account and describes himself there as "exploring the universe from a backyard in Sacramento."

McCarthy captioned the image with this: "When you take pictures as often as I do, the likelihood of happy accidents increases. Like this plane interrupting my shot of our sun yesterday afternoon. Completely unplanned, yet it added something to the image that made it uniquely beautiful.

"Take a look at the video of the transit, and notice how the plane is only visible when covering the sun, but the contrails are easily visible regardless. This is due to the contrails scattering the sun’s hydrogen alpha light, which my scope is sensitive to. It creates the illusion of a vanishing plane!"