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Tsuchinshan-ATLAS’ anti-tail

Chris Schur, taken from Payson, Arizona

Bright comets like Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) — captured here with an 6-minute exposure on an 8-inch RASA — sometimes develop an anti-tail. This secondary tail appears to protrude forward from the comet’s nucleus in the opposite direction of the “normal” tail. An anti-tail is not a physically separate feature, but an perspective effect created when the comet’s tail arcs back behind itself from our point of view.