SUNSET: 
0
Photographer:
Mike Olason
Location of Photo:
Tucson, Arizona
Date/Time of photo:
2025 December 26, 1222UT
Equipment:
50mm f/5 Refractor and IMX462 camera
Description:
On the morning of December 26 Comet 24P/Schaumasse passed 1/2 degree from the background Spiral Galaxy Messier 100 as observed from Earth. The comet and galaxy were about the same brightness, but the comet was only 0.00000946 light years away while the galaxy that has some 400 billion stars was 56 million light years from Earth. The image is a stack of 30x10s images with no special processing done to any of the images or the final image, this is what the camera observed through a 50mm f/5 refractor for 5 minutes. The upper right inset is a smaller negative image which better shows the large coma of the comet. The lower right inset was used to calculate the magnitude of the comet. There are 4 NGC galaxies in the image; NGC 4328, 4323, 4312, 4379.
