2024-10-12 15:15:00
Returning after crossing the Sun, Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas will be able to be seen from across the Northern Hemisphere on Saturday, October 12, evening and for “about ten days”as it continues its journey that began millions of years ago. Visible to the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere in September, C/2023 A3 (its strict nomenclature) was seen again Friday evening in North America, notes Eric Lagadec, an astrophysicist at the Côte d’Azur Observatory in southern France.
Meanwhile, “we couldn’t observe it when it was between the Earth and the Sun”near which it risked disappearing, particularly affected by the solar storm that reached Earth on Thursday, causing the aurora borealis.
The small body of rock and ice was detected in January 2023 by China’s Purple Mountain Observatory (Tsuchinshan), which is where the first half of its name comes from. The second is due to the confirmation of its existence by a telescope from the South African Atlas program.
A long trail of luminous dust
When comets approach our star, the ice contained in their nucleus sublimates and releases a long trail of dust, which reflects sunlight. It is then said that the comet degass, with the formation of a characteristic down, the coma, sometimes risking disintegration.
Visible from Saturday throughout the Northern Hemisphere, Tsuchinshan-Atlas will be every evening “a little higher” in the sky, observable looking west “for ten days”believes Lagadec. But “every day the brightness will decrease a little” as it moves away from the Sun, the astrophysicist warns.
Barring obstacles in its path that modify its trajectory, Tsuchinshan-Atlas follows an orbit that should not bring it closer to Earth for 80,000 years, the comet specialist specifies. Based on the comet’s orbit and some models, it is estimated that it may have been up to 400,000 times the Earth-Sun distance before reaching us. The duration of the journey is calculated in millions of years for this comet which probably saw the light in the Oort cloud, a hypothetical and gigantic set of tiny planets and celestial bodies at the edge of the Solar System.
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