Comets!

Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas (A3) from Flagstaff, Arizona, at 7000 ft above sea level.

When I was a kid everyone looked forward to the return of Halley's Comet. It arrived in 1986 but it was a disappointment. I saw it but it was just an elongated blob. My eyes were a lot better then so I could make it out but it wasn't what we expected.

I saw a couple of comets in the 1990s (Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake). I remember when I was a student at Purdue driving my Dodge Daytona out onto the perfect flat grid of Indiana country roads to see one. My eyes were not great then and I think I had glasses but needed a new prescription and it was a faint, ghostly grey trail across the sky.

Finally, we have easy-to-use digital cameras, and just like with my previous post about long exposure photography, it's possible to get excellent photos.

I could see the comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas (A3) and the tail with the unaided eye but these photos taken with my iPhone 14 are definitely brighter and clearer than what I saw in person.

Comets are cool!