Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Last week we were lucky enough to see a celestial event that could be seen across our entire northern sky; the Aurora Borealis. Last night, 19 October 2024, we experienced a celestial event that was much harder to see; comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS; also known as Comet C/2023 A3. The comet came from the Oort cloud and was only discovered on 9 January 2023 by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China when the comet was ~7.3 AU (1.09 billion km; 680 million mi) from the Sun. The first naked eye observation of the comet from Earth was reported on 23 September 2024. It made its closest approach to Earth on 12 October, at a distance of 71 million km (44 million mi). When visible the tail was reported to be 10 degrees long under dark skies and 17.5 degrees long photographically. By 2 November the comet had faded to below magnitude +6 and was no longer visible to the naked eye. Based on astronomical calculations the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet came from the Oort Cloud - which lies far beyond Pluto and the most distant edges of the Kuiper Belt. The Oort Cloud is believed to be a giant spherical shell surrounding the Sun, planets and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). It's like a big, thick bubble around our solar system, made of icy, comet-like objects. Because of the comet's orbit (a retrograde orbit, lying at an inclination of 139°) Tsuchinshan-ATLAS did not approach close to the giant planets of our Solar System. Consequently, the comet is only weakly bound to the Sun and it is calculated that the outbound orbit will become a hyperbolic trajectory that will most likely result in the comet being ejected from the Solar System - never to return. Here are some of the photos of the rare sight that we saw last night between 6:30 PM and 7:30 PM here on the East Coast: (click on any photo to start the slideshow) In addition, here’s a 1-minute time-lapse video of the Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS captured from space by Astronaut Matthew Dominick onboard the International Space Station (ISS).
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