C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

Like in the last years, we also had a spectacular comet in 2024: Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was visible to the naked eye in October. Unfortunately, the visibility window was only short for us, but on October 15th we were able to spot the comet while driving home from vacation at the A23 car park close to the Kiel Channel.

During the last weeks, the comet was announced as a naked-eye object, but unfortunately we had no good opportunity to spot it during the time before perihelion. Afterwards the comet was just a few degrees above the horizon, and the weather conditions were not that good while we were in Schleswig-Holstein.

On Oct 15th, weather and timing did fit then, but we were on the way home from vacation and had almost no equipment at hand. But what should we do - we stopped at the highest available "mountain", which was the bridge over the Kiel Channel, went some meters away from the motorway and then it was possible to (barely) see the comet with the naked eye.

As we neither had a tripod nor a serious camera, the only way to document it was to use the mobile phone camera in night mode and point it to the comet by hand. But that way I was at least able to catch it at all...