Comet C2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)

Comet C2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is a long-period Oort cloud comet that was discovered independently by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China on January 9th, 2023 and the ATLAS telescope in South Africa on February 22nd, 2023 when it was 680 million miles from the Sun.
The comet made its closest approach to the Sun at 58 million miles on September 27th, 2024 and was closest to Earth on October 12th 2024 at 41 million miles. For comparison, the Earth is about 93 million miles from the Sun.
The comet's orbital period was about 83 million years.
As luck would have it, on the date this photo was taken, the comet's bright tail was perfectly aligned with the more distant portion of the tail on the side of the sun opposite Earth. Also, on the date this photo was taken, the comet was passing globula star cluster M5 which is in the constellation Serpens. M5 is visible to the right of the comet in this photo.

Date: October 20th, 2024

Telescope: AstroTech 115EDT triplet refractor equiped with an Astro Tech 2in Field Flattener
Mount: Orion Atlas EQ-G
Camera: ZWO ASI-2400 MC Pro one-shot-color camera
Guiding: Telescope: Telescope: Askar FMA180 Pro, Camera: ASI-120 MM
Exposures: 143 one-second exposures using a IR/UV cut filter
Image acquisition and guiding: ASIAIR Plus

Image processing Software: PixInsight v. 1.8.9-2