Sunday, October 20, 2024

Photos of the Day: Capturing Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS Images for the Third and Final Time...

An image of comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS as seen with my Nikon D3300 DSLR camera...on October 19, 2024.
Richard T. Par

Yesterday, I drove back to Diamond Bar's Summitridge Park in California to take one final group of photos of comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS).

I originally went to Summitridge Park for a third attempt last Friday, October 18, but showed up a bit later than I should have (around 7:30 PM, PDT) since I ate dinner at home beforehand. The marine layer coming in from the Pacific Ocean (43 miles away) was already obscuring much of the sky across Los Angeles County from my vantage point at Summitridge...making it more difficult for me to spot the increasingly-faint comet.

I arrived at the park a few minutes before 7 PM, PDT last night (sunset was at 6:11 PM, PDT), and as shown with the images that I've included with this post, Tsuchinshan–ATLAS is becoming less and less visible as it moves away from Earth. The comet, once it disappears from view at the end of this month, won't return to our inner Solar System for another 80,000 years.

Here are the settings on my Nikon D3300 DSLR camera for yesterday's cosmic photoshoot:

Lens: 70-300mm Nikon telephoto lens
ISO: 400 to 800
F-stop: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 2.5 seconds
Live View mode on my LCD screen used instead of the viewfinder

Hope you guys were able to spot Tsuchinshan–ATLAS over the past few weeks as well! Happy Sunday.

An image of comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS as seen with my Nikon D3300 DSLR camera...on October 19, 2024.
Richard T. Par

An image of comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS as seen with my Nikon D3300 DSLR camera...on October 19, 2024.
Richard T. Par

An image of comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS as seen with my Nikon D3300 DSLR camera...on October 19, 2024.
Richard T. Par

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