In this image, Comet 17P/Holmes and it's surrounding coma is physically larger than the sun -- some 870,000 miles in diameter -- and expanding at nearly 1,100 miles per hour!

The bright star near the comet is Mirphak (also called Mirfak or Algenib or Alpha Persei), the primary star in the constellation Perseus. The other stars in the field of view are part of the Perseus Open Cluster, Melotte 20.

This image was taken from my suburban back yard using a Nikon D70 loooking through a William Optics ZenithStar 66 SD telescope, and is composed of ten 3-minute exposures, stacked on top of each other with DeepSky Stacker and then processed extensively in Adobe Photoshop.

For the techno-geeks: ISO200, 10x3min. lights, 3x3min. darks, no flat, no offset/bias. Stacked in DSS using default settings, processed in CS2; Carboni's Astronomy Tools actions provided the frame and interference lines on the stars, plus some enhancement of the comet.