A comet I’ve been tracking called “2014/UQ4”
This a composite of 5 stacked images. The comet is moving rapidly across the background star field, so they are smeared out while the comet itself is sharp. The tail is quite long at this point, about 30 arcminutes (half a degree).
The image below is an animation made from 31 frames show the comet moving against the background stars. Click on the image to see it animated. The frames are about 10 minutes apart in real time, with some longer gaps. As you can see it’s moving quite fast!
Notice how the comet is moving *perpendicular* to the tail. That’s because contrary to popular impression, a comet tail is not due to the motion of the comet but always points directly away from the Sun.
[20″ CDK f/6.8 with FLI PL09000 camera @ Mt. Teide Observatory, Canary Islands, Spain]