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Photographer:

Mike Olason

Location of Photo:

Tucson, Arizona

Date/Time of photo:

2026 March 21, 1229UT

Equipment:

50mm f/5 Refractor and IMX462 camera

Description:

Comet 88P/Howell was to the lower left of Nashira, a magnitude 3.7 star, in the morning twilight as the comet and star had just risen above the Catalina Mountains. Comet Howell was magnitude 10.3 with a green coma 2' wide. Nashira was 450 times brighter than the comet in this image, the star is 139 light years from Earth and is 5 times more luminous than our Sun. Comet Howell was only 184 million miles from Earth, 0.0000313 light years, it took the reflected Sun light from Comet Howell 16 minutes and 28 seconds to reach Earth for these images.