Comet Holmes and Andromeda Galaxy, 1892. The comet (also known as 'f 1892 III') is at lower left, with the galaxy at upper right. Comets are bodies of ice and dust that enter the inner solar system from the outer solar system. As they approach the Sun, the heat boils the ice, producing a coma around the nucleus, and a tail behind it. This periodic comet, discovered in 1892, returns to the solar system roughly every 7 years. Andromeda, the nearest large galaxy to our own, is around 140,000 light years across, and located 2.5 million light years away in the constellation of the same name. Observed by E. E. Barnard (US astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard) from the Lick Observatory, USA, on 10 November 1892.