Comet Tsuchinshan

This is the comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). It was hovering in the southwest sky at a little over 50 degrees when I caught this. To give you a better idea of its location, the faint galaxy in the upper far right is IC 730.

This was taken with my 152mm Stellarvue scope and a Nikon D810A camera. I was tracking on the comet but not guiding. I used a tool in the software that controls my Astro-Physics Mach2 mount. It's called the Horizons tool, and it helps you go out to JPL Horizons and download an ephemeris for small bodies. Then it will go to and track on an object such as a comet, that is moving at other than sidereal time. This allowed me to take 90-second to120-second images without the head of the comet elongating.

I didn't do much to this. Separated stars from comet and stretched the comet enough to bring out the tail more, but not enough to blow out the brighter head.