45P/Honda–Mrkos–Pajdušáková is a short-period comet discovered by Minoru Honda on December 3, 1948. The comet is named after Minoru Honda, Antonín Mrkos, and Ľudmila Pajdušáková. The comet has an elliptical orbit with a period of 5.25 years.The nucleus is estimated to be 0.5-1.6 kilometers in diameter. During the 2011 perihelion passage the comet was recovered on 5 June 2011 at apparent magnitude 21. The comet made a close approach of only 0.0600 AU (8,980,000 km) from the Earth on August 15, 2011. The comet will also pass close to Earth on February 11, 2017. This image was taken on the evening of December 23th in the very close time window between the twilight and the comet's hiding behind the nearby pine trees. Therefore only three 60 sec. exposures could be done. Since these were made before the begin of the astronomical darkness, some gradient was present on the raw images, which made the processing very tricky, and on the right hand side of the image can be seen the silhouette of the nearby pine tree. An image of the same comet during its previous perihelion passage can be seen here.