Comet over Moonlit Farmscape

This image of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was taken on October 16, 2024 in Perth County, southern Ontario. The farmscape was brightly lit by the almost full moon. The image is a stack of 32 individual exposures.

Comets are “dirty ice balls” made up of ice, dust, and various organic compounds. As a comet approaches the sun, the ice sublimes, and the dust is pushed away by the solar wind, creating the dust tail which always points away from the sun.

In this image, an “anti-tail” could also be seen pointing in the opposite direction. The anti-tail came from dust left along the orbit of the comet, which became visible as Earth crossed the comet’s orbital plane.