Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas is currently headed for a rendez-vous with the inner solar system that should culminate during late Fall (2024) when it's predicted to become a naked-eye object. The comet originated in the Oort Cloud and began its journey toward the inner solar system at least 10s of thousands and perhaps million of years ago. At perihelion (24Sept 2024) the comet will close to within 0.39 AU of the Sun - roughly the same as the Sun-Mercury distance. Best views from Earth will likely be in mid or late October at dusk when the comet closes to within 71 million km. In time, the comet may be ejected from the solar system due to pertubations in its orbit during the comet's inbound journey.

Data for this image was acquired on the evening of June 1st, 2024 (local time). One and three minute R, G, and B subs were acquired. The 3' subs were used for image processing; the 1' subs were used for magnitude calculations (I obtained a value of 10.2).

The field of view used to acquire the image is shown in the Imaging Details box. The image at top is reduced in size (to roughly 25% scale). Clicking the image above will open up a somewhat larger, version.

Imaging Details
Imaging Date	02June 2024 ~5:00 UT
Imaging Location	Las Cruces, NM (32.31, -106.74)
Constellation	Virgo
Imaging Telescope	Stellarvue 115 fluorite triplet
Imaging Camera	Atik 460EX
Imaging Filter(s)	Astrodon R, G, B
Exposures	10 x 180" for each filter
Guiding	50mm f/4 guide scope, 2x Barlow, Lodestar X2, PhD Guiding
Image Processing	Sub alignment and initial stretches were performed using Nebulosity; Photoshop CS5 was used to process the stacked subs. Topaz DeNoise AI was used to reduce noise and sharpen the image.