Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet over Illinois 2024
The Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet showed up in the early dusk skies over the Northern Hemisphere and as badly as I wanted to find some time and get out into the country to do some photos of it for my Lost Americana project, it just wasn’t meant to be with my busy schedule.
So, I did the next best thing and managed to capture it over a high school football field in the suburbs of Chicago. I actually hadn’t planned on photographing it. The weather had been poor most days when I had time and taking a shot from the city isn’t always the best. See below. But as I was leaving a girls volleyball game that night I started to take some long exposures of the sky to see if I could find it. After a few minutes I noticed it faintly in one image and grabbed a small-compact tripod I carry in my bag. It’s good for cell phones and point-and-shoot cameras, but when I wedged it against a post it was able to do a decent job.
This image was taken about 45 minutes after the others and was close to downtown Chicago. The comet is definitely fainter and the orange glow from the city illuminates so much of the particles in the air.
