November 11, 2024
On your birthday, photons that left distant stars before humans walked the Earth finally completed their journey. You began yours.
The Unusual Tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas
Birthday · November 11, 2024
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APOD published November 11, 2024. Credit: Bray Falls. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
What created an unusual dark streak in Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas's tail? Some images of the bright comet during mid-October not only caught its impressively long tail and its thin anti-tail, but a rather unexpected feature: a dark streak in the long tail. The reason for the dark streak is currently unclear and a topic of some debate. Possible reasons include a plume of dark dust, different parts of the bright tail being unusually superposed, and a shadow of a dense part of the coma on smaller dust particles. The streak is visible in the featured image taken on October 14 from Texas, USA. To help future analyses, if you have taken a good image of the comet that clearly shows this dark streak, please send it in to APOD. Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS has now faded considerably and is returning to the outer Solar System. Gallery: Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in 2024
Image credit: Bray Falls