From the Solar System to Deep Space

Comet Lemmon (C/2012 F6) with its long faint tail appears over the southeastern coast of Australia. looking carefully at the image you will find a couple of other non-stellar objects, two little faint clouds which are galaxies in constellation Sculptor, one at the image right edge (NGC 253) and the other just above the comet head (NGC 55). While Lemmon is a Solar System wandering little icy body only one astronomical unit (Earth-Sun distance) away from us (at the imaging time) the two galaxies are over 300 billion times further away in our Milky Way neighborhood. Click on the second photo to see a beautiful telescopic close-up view of the comet passing against the edge-one spiral galaxy NGC 55.