composite of 4 images and cropped.

While a lot of focus has been on Comet 2022 E3, the Southern Hemisphere has another beauty...one that's been around for some time now. Remember Comet 2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) — the most distant active inbound comet ever found? Well,it's still amazing. This truly monster comet (one of the largest ever seen, with a nucleus less than 18 kilometers in diameter) is now 335 million miles away from Earth, but it shines at magnitude 8.1 — only about a magnitude fainter than Comet 2022 E3, which is current only about 120 million miles away. Comet 2017 K2 is in the southern constellation Hydrus and near the bright star Achernar. I took this shot with a 20-mm lens from Maun, Botswana. Zoom in to see its nearly 1/2˚-long tail in this roughly 10˚-wide field of view.