Tornado Alley (PROG)

[Zorax]

Scroll down to the second image.

https://blogs.nasa.gov/Watch_the_Skies/2024/04/05/when-and-how-to-spot-the-devil-comet/

Something to be mentioned here considering I'm likely 90% correct about that comet shot.
Nasa should know better, but hardly anyone bothers. That shot is almost surely a 'blended' digital of possibly 2 or three different frames. Using photo manipulation.
1. The landscape area is is almost certainly a wide angle lens of 25 to 40MM. Where the tree is zoomed into max. The whole horizon is all that you get with that lens.

The possible 2nd has to be at least 300MM zoom telephoto or 300+MM Prime.
https://shotkit.com/prime-vs-zoom-lens/ for the comet/star field.

The size of Andromeda galaxy would be the size of a pea in the wide angle. And the exposure time for the landscape would barely show the star field for lack of saturation.

To shoot a star field with a wide angle without trails if not on a tracking rig, meaning the stars are pinpoint, you would only have about 10 to 20 seconds of exposure time (shutter speed) if that, before the stars advance out of your frame or move ever so slightly. Earth rotates pretty quick in a camera frame. A telephoto you'd get like 3 seconds because you're zoomed in.

The comet may not even have been in that position with Andromeda, but the person setting up that digital image might have thought it looked cool that way.

Then there's the need for multiple frames to shoot the star field so one can use photoshop and stretch the data to 'soak' the image for contrast... Computers and digital sensors have made for incredible images but my total beef is with people being creative with their submissions and how they manipulated things to get the final is not explained. The line under said 'well composed' but maybe it should say 'composite' or manipulated.

Then I'm at star parties and people wonder why Andromeda looks so small and lame and not gigantic like in pictures like that. Photogs and astronomers know Andromeda doesn't take up 1/3 of the whole picture with a bunch of trees in the foreground in focus stretching almost the whole horizon. But no one cares but me.