Astrophoto: Comet LINEAR Meets a Spiral Galaxy

By Nancy Atkinson - September 30, 2013 02:41 PM UTC | Extragalactic

Just in from the pretty pictures department: Award-winning Astrophotographer

Damian Peach

from the UK took this gorgeous image this morning of Comet C/2012 V2 LINEAR passing by bright spiral galaxy NGC 2997. While the cosmic duo looks like they are right next to each other, Damian notes that in reality, the comet is 17 light minutes away from Earth while NGC 2997 is 38 million light years away.

The specs: 0.11m F5.6 with STL-11k. LRGB. L: 5x3mins. RGB: 1x2mins.

Check out more of Damian's fantastic collection of images at

his website

Facebook page.

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com