Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Heads Towards Earth, Will Be Visible With Naked Eye

After solar storms and eclipse, the year 2024 is set to offer another spectacle for sky gazers. According to Forbes, people will be able to see Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) with naked eyes in the month of October. It is currently travelling between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and is only observable if you use a large telescope, the outlet further said. It will be one of the rare events and experts are already calling A3 as the "comet of the year".

The comet is expected to become as bright as Venus in the night sky.

A3 comes from the Oort Cloud, a region in our solar system that's home to millions of comets, and has an orbit of 80,000 years.

The comet was jointly discovered in February last year by astronomers at South Africa's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope and China's Tsuchinshan Observatory.

A3 will make its closest approach to the Sun on October 10, 2024, and will be easily visible in northern hemisphere. In the southern hemisphere, it will be visible just after sunset.

The comet will start dimming around mid-October, as per the Forbes report.

The Virtual Telescope Project, a reputed website for discovery and live events, has posted an image of Comet A3, clicked on May 5.

The website said that its coma (or nucleus) is visible and tail is continuously changing as the geometry involving the Sun, the Earth and the comet evolves.

According to NASA, comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock and ice. They range from a few kilometres to hundreds of kilometres wide, but as they orbit closer to the Sun, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet. This material forms a tail that stretches millions of miles.