NASA captures meteor zooming past galaxy in perfectly-timed photo

A NASA photographer has captured a stunning photo of a meteor zooming past a distant galaxy.

The photo, which is featured as NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day, was snapped by Aman Chokshi.

It shows the Triangulum galaxy (M33), which lies around 3 million light years away from Earth.

While the meteor looks like it makes a near miss with M33, NASA explained that this actually the case.

NASA said: “The galaxy was never in danger. For one thing, the Triangulum galaxy (M33), pictured, is much bigger than the tiny grain of rock at the head of the meteor.

Large asteroid whizzes past Earth at over a MILLION miles per hour

NASA is preparing for a fake ASTEROID impact to prevent future doomsday scenario  

“For another, the galaxy is much farther away -- in this instance 3 million light years as opposed to only about 0.0003 light seconds.”

According to NASA, Mr Chokshi was lucky to capture the eye-catching image.

It added: “The astrophotographer was quite lucky to capture both a meteor and a galaxy in a single exposure - which was subsequently added to two other images of M33 to bring up the spiral galaxy's colours.

“At the end, the meteor was gone in a second, but the galaxy will last billions of years.”