Comets, often described as “dirty snowballs,” are small celestial bodies made up of ice, dust, and rocky material. They are ancient remnants from the formation of our Solar System, with most originating in distant regions such as the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud. As a comet journeys inward toward the Sun, solar radiation heats its surface, causing its ices to vaporize in a process called sublimation. This releases gas and dust that form a glowing coma, a fuzzy envelope surrounding the nucleus. When the comet moves even closer to the Sun, solar wind and radiation pressure stretch this material into a distinctive tail, which always points away from the Sun. Generally, the closer a comet gets to the Sun, the more intense the radiation and the greater the loss of material from its surface. See my “What are Comets?” page for more information about comets.
While most comets are bound to our Solar System, a few rare examples—such as ‘Oumuamua (2017) and Comet 2I/Borisov (2019) originate from interstellar space. These interstellar comets likely formed around distant stars and were ejected into space, eventually passing through our Solar System on one-time trajectories, offering valuable clues about planetary formation beyond our own stellar neighborhood.
Comet Hale-Bopp
Comet Hale-Bopp
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.
Comet C2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)
Comet C2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) taken on Oct. 12, 2024 just after sunset.
Comet NEOWISE C/2020 F3 on July 19, 2020
Comet NEOWISE C/2020 F3 shot with Meade Series 6000 70mm Quad APO Astrograph on Celestron AVX mount. This image was taken on July 19, 2020 at 10:30 p.m. CDT from Fort Griffin, TX. Three stacked 15 sec images at ISO 800 processed in Photoshop. No calibration frames.
Comet Lovejoy and the Pleiades.
Comet Lovejoy and the Pleiades open star cluster on January 17, 2015.
Comet Hale-Bopp
This forty second exposure of Comet Hale-Bopp was taken prior to sunrise on the morning of March 20, 1997. The two tails of Hale-Bopp can be seen clearly. The yellowish-white tail is composed of dust particles while the blue ion tail is made up of various gases.
Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3)
Comet NEOWISE (C/2020 F3) shot with Nikon D5100 and Nikkor 55-200mm lens, ISO 10159 @ 80mm, f/5.6, 8 second exposure. Fort Griffin, TX.
Comet Lemmon on the evening of Oct. 19, 2025.
Comet Lemmon on the evening of Oct. 19, 2025. Nikon D5100, 55mm, 6 sec., f/4, ISO 1000.
Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6 Lemmon) shot on Oct. 25, 2025.
Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6 Lemmon) shot on the evening of Oct. 25, 2025. Nikon D5100, 55-200mm lens at 70mm, f/4.2, 45 second exposure, ISO 400. Sky Watcher Star Adventurer 2i sky tracker. Processed in Lightroom to bring out as much of the tail as possible.
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Comets, often described as “dirty snowballs,” are small celestial bodies made up of ice, dust, and rocky material. They are ancient remnants from the formation of our Solar System, with most originating in distant regions such as the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud. As a comet journeys inward toward the Sun, solar radiation heats its surface, causing its ices to vaporize in a process called sublimation. This releases gas and dust that form a glowing coma, a fuzzy envelope surrounding the nucleus. When the comet moves even closer to the Sun, solar wind and radiation pressure stretch this material into a distinctive tail, which always points away from the Sun. Generally, the closer a comet gets to the Sun, the more intense the radiation and the greater the loss of material from its surface. See my “What are Comets?” page for more information about comets.
