Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas 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. For a change, the comet lived up to the hype. About two weeks after perihelion (27Sept), the comet emerged from the Sun's glare and became naked-eye visible in the evening with a maximum magnitude of -4.5. It showed a visible tail approaching 10 degrees (perhaps as long as 20° in some photographic images). The tail (above) is about 11° in length before exceeding the field of view. A faint anti-tail is also visible. It was easily the finest comet of the decade and one of the finest in the last century.

Globular cluster M5 (NGC 5904) can be seen showing through the tail of the comet. It's the brighter of the two star-like objects about half way along the comet's tail.

Data for this image was acquired on the evening of October 14th, 2024 (local time) from Leasburg Dam State Park. I put a 100mm lens on my trusty old Canon T2i and took a variety of shots finally settling on five seconds at f/4 (ISO 800). That image is shown above. Amazingly, the comet also imaged well with my iPhone. An 'impressionist' version of that pic is shown on the right.

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	15Oct 2024 ~1:40 UT
Imaging Location	Radium Springs, NM (32.49, -106.92)
Constellation	Virgo
Imaging Lens	Canon 100mm f/2 lens
Imaging Camera	Canon T2i (modified)
Imaging Filter(s)	n/a
Exposures	5" @ f/4 (800 ISO)
Guiding	unguided
Image Processing	The image above is a stack of five subs, stacked using Nebulosity and processed using Photoshop CS5. Topaz DeNoise AI was used to clean up the image.