The Unusual Tails of Comet Tsuchinshan Atlas

The Unusual Tails of Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas

Image Credit & Copyright:
Bray Falls

Explanation:
What created an unusual dark streak in Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas’s tail?

Some images of the
bright comet during mid-October not only caught its
impressively long tail and its
thin anti-tail,
but a rather unexpected feature: a
dark
streak
in
the
long tail.

The reason for the dark streak is currently unclear and a topic of some debate.

Possible reasons include a
plume of dark
dust,
different parts of the
bright tail
being unusually superposed, and a
shadow of a dense part of the
coma on smaller dust particles.

The streak is visible in the
featured
image taken on October 14 from Texas, USA.

To help future analyses, if you have taken a good image of the comet that clearly shows this dark streak, please
send it in to
APOD.

Comet
Tsuchinshan–ATLAS
has now
faded considerably and is returning to the outer
Solar System.