Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) and globular cluster M5.

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) – Tuesday night, Oct. 15, 2024. The weather was not the best. We had a cool front blowing through with 15-25 mph gusts and the Moon was just about full helping to wash out the comet but I managed to get ten 5 second shots that I could stack in Sequator along with 5 darks. I processed this shot in Adobe Camera RAW. I used a Sky Watcher Star Adventurer 2i to track the comet and a Nikon D5100 and 55-200mm lens. While it’s not the best shot it does have a couple of things going for it. It reveals the globular cluster M5, the faint smudge to the right of the comet’s nucleus, and if you squint hard you can just make out the anti-tail stretching down in front of the comet. The anti-tail appears to protrude from the opposite direction of the normal tail that is easily seen stretching upward in the photo. The anti-tail is not a physically separate feature, but an perspective effect created when the comet’s tail arcs back behind itself from our point of view.