Cosmic Cruiser [Explored]

Comets are icy wanderers of frozen gases, dust, and rock that travel the vastness of space with almost poetic grace. They originate in the darkest regions of the solar system and, drawn by the Sun's gravity, embark on their journey, leaving luminous trails behind them—bright, glowing tails of gas and dust that stretch across the sky.

 

In this image, the cosmic cruiser, comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, appears to be on a collision course with an earthly cruise ship, starting its journey out of the port of Piraeus and illuminating the night with more profane light.

 

An interesting detail in this slightly more intimate capture of the comet is the faint and highly distorted ion tail. There have been many reports that Tsuchinshan-ATLAS does not display such an ion tail, and almost all of the images I've seen seem to support this. I was all the more surprised when I noticed the faint blueish tail in my data. I initially suspected a random superposition with an aircraft contrail, but since the structure remained the same relative position to the comet in all 70 exposures, I am convinced that it is real.

 

In contrast to the prominent dust tail and the faint anti-tail, the ion tail consists of charged plasma particles that are swept along by the solar wind like leaves in a river. Due to the Sun's recent coronal mass ejections (which caused the strong auroras), the solar wind has been very variable recently, causing the distortions in the ion tail.

 

EXIF

Canon EOS-R

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L ll IS USM @ 140mm

iOptron SkyTracker Pro

 

Sky:

Stack of 70x 5s @ ISO800, f/2.8

 

Foreground:

Single exposure of 20s @ ISO1600, f/8

Done