We were in eastern Howard County, Maryland tonight and ended up going to Rockburn Branch Park to see the comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS). This ended up being a pretty good location as we found an area that was clear of trees and artificial light. Although we still could not see it with the naked eye, we were once again easily able to photograph it.
We recorded a timelapse covering about 50 minutes, starting from a few minutes after we saw the comet until we left at around 8:15pm.
What we saw is definitely not nearly as impressive as some of the photos and videos out there of this comet! Still, at least we’ve been able to see it on multiple evenings now.
The comet and its long tail were pretty faint tonight. The comet is getting dimmer as it moves away from the sun. It is also becoming visible after sunset further above the horizon every night, providing more time to see the comet.
Tonight happened to be the so-called Super Hunter’s Moon, the closest the Moon will be to the Earth in 2024. It is only a few percent larger than the average full moon, so not a particularly large difference. But as it was a full moon, it was relatively bright outside, likely contributing to the comet appearing dim.
We used the same settings for the entire timelapse. Here, we have the first and last frames. It did get darker during the time we were photographing the comet but not significantly.
The same edits were applied to each frame as well, resulting in the purple sky at the beginning. Some color correction probably should have been done but was not. Oh well!