Tiangong and Tsuchinshan–ATLAS

There are two items of interest in my photo today—the Chinese Tiangong Space Station and the head and long-stretching tail of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS). Sunlight reflecting off the space station scribed an arc on the sky as it moved from the top-right to the bottom-left of the scene at Oak Park Beach in Cronulla, Australia, on October 4th, 2024.

The beautiful—but much fainter—tail of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS stretches up toward the left from the comet’s head, not far above the clouds at about 2/3 of the way across the image and fading into the brightening sky as it crosses the space station’s path.

Canon EOS 6D Mk II DSLR, Yongnuo 50 mm f/1.4 lens set at f/4.0, exposure time 2.5 seconds.

16 shots were taken, each showing a segment of the Tiangong space station's tail and the comet. These were processed in Adobe Lightroom for exposure an colour balance. The images were then stacked in Photoshop to create the continuous trail of Tiangong.