Image of Sun-Approaching Comet ISON

Image of Sun-Approaching Comet
ISON
July 25, 2013 — The sun-approaching
Comet ISON floats against a
seemingly infinite backdrop of
numerous galaxies and a handful of
foreground stars.
Share This:
9
The icy visitor, with its long gossamer
tail, appears to be swimming like a
tadpole through a deep pond of
celestial wonders.
In reality, the comet is much, much
closer. The nearest star to the Sun is
over 60,000 times farther away, and
the nearest large galaxy to the Milky
Way is over thirty billion times more
distant.
These vast dimensions are lost in this
deep space Hubble exposure that
visually combines our view of the
universe from the very nearby to the
extraordinarily far away.
In this composite image, background
stars and galaxies were separately
photographed in red and yellow-
green light. Because the comet
moved between exposures relative to
the background objects, its
appearance was blurred. The blurred
comet photo was replaced with a
single, black-and-white exposure.