Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

[GTom]

5 hours ago, kev said:

Dunno about you guys n gals but from the weather forecast my next chance seems to be Thursday evening. 
 

great pics everyone

Up in Scotland now, next chance is in 80'000 years as it seems...

[John]

1 hour ago, GTom said:

Up in Scotland now, next chance is in 80'000 years as it seems...

"Comet of the century" they say. 

Personally I think it will take a lot to beat Comet Neowise back in 2020. It coincided with a fine spell of weather as well 🙂

[Nicola Fletcher]

I had a fabulous view of it last night in the Wicklow Mountains National Park with very little light pollution. I got a handheld iPhone image through my binoculars and some widefield pictures which I haven’t yet had time to process but they look pretty good straight off the camera.

[GTom]

6 hours ago, John said:

"Comet of the century" they say. 

Personally I think it will take a lot to beat Comet Neowise back in 2020. It coincided with a fine spell of weather as well 🙂

Won't be super difficult to beat, both Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake offered far better views. Different century though, but being circumpolar AND clearly, tail incl naked eye visible has certainly higher scores. Next time maybe!

I was pointing on the weather here: I lost the ENTIRE last Venus season because there was no single evening clear on the West. For Months.

Edited Wednesday at 07:46 by GTom

[CentaurZ]

Here is my Alt-Azm chart for the comet as seen 45 minutes after sunset from Chicagoland.

[CentaurZ]

And here is the view from London.

[Nyctimene]

Spotted the comet at 19h45min CEST between cloud banks and additional washout by the light of the rising full moon. The 16x70 binos showed the comet for the first time with it's tail of about 4° length. Bright "false nucleus", coma rather small. The tail was visible by naked eye, when using averted vision. A nice binocular comet; the view matched Nicola Fletcher's first photograph above quite well.

Stephan

[Oldfort]

After the usual will it/won't it stay clear, Success.

 

I think the best view was through binoculars, but for my family the little telescope was best.  Also I think it was just visible with naked eye and averted vision.

 

The picture was taken wide angle so I didn't miss.

 

[scotty1]

The moonlight really washed out the sky tonight. Luckily some gaps between clouds 

Phone shot 

[paulastro]

Did anyone make a magnitude estimate last night?  For today, (17th) Heavens-Above indicates +3.5 and SkySafari +3.7.

[geoflewis]

This is 25x5s, captured on the evening of 16 October with my tripod mounted Nikon D90 DSLR and Nikkor 18mm-200mm zoom lens set at approx 65mm. I shot a single flat using my laptop screen to try to reduce vignetting, which worked reasonably well compared with no flats. All processing was using ImagesPlus6.5. The image is very bright overall to better show the anti tail. There is a very strong gradient due to the twilight sky as the comet was setting, plus some clouds were passing through, hence the smudge at the bottom, but I decided to leave them in the stack for better SNR on the comet.

[IB20]

An easier than expected find, located right next door to Omega Serpens, quite a similar mag. Pretty sensationalist about comet of the century mind, Neowise was brighter!

 

Edited Thursday at 18:50 by IB20

[Scosmico]

E.Musk trying to spoil my comet watch.

[Mr P]

Saw the comet tonight,not visible with naked eye but ok with 10x42 binoculars.

I think it would have been better without the full moon but just glad it was a clear sky for a change,the picture was taken with an old lumix bridge camera so not a great image.

[Paul M]

Had my first attempt at this tonight. Less than optimal conditions when I left home for the sea front with two teenage girls and 2 crazy labradoodles in tow.

Only had my phone camera with me and started taking shots where there were promising gaps in the clouds. Then Arcturus showed broke cover and I realised my target was still in the clouds.

It did clear, briefly and I got a couple of snaps. Didn't see it naked eye, too many distractions to concentrate!

Not so much Comet of the Century, more small and perfectly formed!

 

 

[Nik271]

I saw it with 10x50 bins this evening about 7:30pm, seemed a bit brighter than omega Ser but dimmer than epsilon Ser, I would put it at mag 4. Not naked eye visible in the twilight sky. Maybe it was great a couple of days ago right now I rate it just good.

[scotty1]

1 hour ago, Scosmico said:

E.Musk trying to spoil my comet watch.

I saw those when viewing the Comet but had a delay setting up, will have to waite 80,000 years to get that shot.

[mcrowle]

Was out early this evening too, for my first view of the comet since seeing it through my ‘scope in May. From a local beach it was just visible to the naked eye, but this was a struggle due to the bright, full Moon. 7 x 50 binoculars improved matters of course.

Regards, Mike.

[Mr P]

Didn’t realise I had captured it with my phone,just underneath bottom right of the cloud,I have to keep swapping my glasses depending on what I’m looking at…sky or phone .we saw the satellites but were too slow to get a shot,hopefully someone somewhere has managed it.

[Geoff Lister]

My Seestar S50 was reluctant to calibrate its position and plate-solve, but once it was sorted the results were worth the effort. Unprocessed from my tablet :-

and a longer sample, showing the movement of the elongated core with respect to the background stars:-

Geoff

[Paul M]

1 minute ago, Geoff Lister said:

y Seestar S50 was reluctant to calibrate its position and plate-solve, but once it was sorted the results were worth the effort. Unprocessed from my tablet :-

Excellent!

It looks like it has an "anti-tail" in both images or is that some kind of gradient?

I haven't really studied the geometry to know if an ati tail is likely.

[Gfamily]

Similar to @Geoff Lister, my SeeStar had problems initially confirming the identification - but that was mainly because I had left the Solar Filter on from showing the school pupils the Sunspots earlier! 

That fixed - some nice results. 

A bit of enhancing to bring out the anti-tail

[Geoff Lister]

It looks like the anti-tail is genuine, and not a ghost reflection in the optics.

[andrew63]

Clear here at last.  I had my first view tonight of Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS - lovely sight in 8x42 with a bright tail. It clouded over later, but managed to get a photo from the garden so really glad to have captured it.  Taken at 7.28 pm.

 

Edited Friday at 13:56 by andrew63
info

[maw lod qan]

Finally, we have clear skies.

I've moved from the observatory to 8 miles North of the house. The nearest major light source is 15 miles.

I'm hoping!