by Sanjeev Kumar Patro

Bhubaneswar: Star gazers get ready for a stellar night vision show on the black sky screen. A dazzling comet is heading earth and will outshine even the brightest stars and planets in the night sky. Its comet named C/2023 A3 cometh!

This comet will be visible to all on naked eyes. The glee here is it is expected to be much brighter than Comet NEOWISE, which lit up our skies in 2020. The brighty comet will show up its shiny tail too. Astronomers say, “As the comet gets closer to the Sun, its icy core will heat up, creating a beautiful tail that could stretch across the night sky.”

The last time an exceptionally bright comet was visible from the northern latitudes was in 1997 when Comet Hale-Bopp lit up the sky.

Since it will be conspicuous by its shine in the northern hemisphere, sky watchers will have a gala night in India, too. 

BIRTH STORY

The story began on February 22, 2023, when it was spotted by the ATLAS telescope in South Africa. ATLAS is a robotic early-warning system designed to detect near-Earth asteroids in advance and warn us if there’s a possibility of impact. At the time of discovery, this faint object was between the orbit of Jupiter and Saturn. Follow-up observations revealed that this object had a short tail and was designated a comet. In honor of both discoverers, the comet was officially named C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS).

The name of the comet tells a lot about it. The letter C indicates that this is a non-periodic comet. These comets come from the distant Oort Cloud and either pass through our Solar System just once or take anywhere from 200 to thousands of years to orbit the Sun. 

At the time of its discovery, the comet was about a billion kilometers away and hurtling toward us at 80 kilometers or 50 miles per second. 

COMET SIGHTING DAY

Between September 25 and October 2, it will also become visible in the morning sky for those in the Northern Hemisphere.

The best view of C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) will come when it moves up into the evening sky around October 10. Around October 12, when the comet makes its closest approach to Earth, it will be at its brightest. During this time, comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) will be relatively high above the horizon in the evening sky, making it ideal for viewing. Throughout October, this celestial visitor will keep rising in the evening sky. However, after October 12, its brightness will gradually decrease.