SPACE – Astronomy enthusiasts are on alert. Returning after crossing the Sun, comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS can be seen by Earthlings, from the entire Northern Hemisphere, since Saturday October 12 and for “around ten days”continuing its journey started millions of years ago.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS: the first splendid images observed from France
The small body of rock and ice was detected in January 2023 by China’s Purple Mountain Observatory (Tsuchinshan), giving it the first half of its name. He owes the second to the confirmation of his existence by a telescope from the South African ATLAS program.
Visible to the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere in September, C/2023 A3, its rigorous nomenclature, was seen again Friday evening in North America, reported to AFP Éric Lagadec, astrophysicist at the Observatory of the French Riviera.
In the meantime, “we could not observe it when it was between the Earth and the Sun”near which it risked disappearing, particularly affected by the solar storm which reached Earth on Thursday, causing the Northern Lights.
When comets approach our star, the ice contained in their core sublimates and releases a long trail of dust, reflecting sunlight. It is then said that the comet degases, with the formation of a characteristic hair, the coma, sometimes at the risk of disintegrating.
Looking “like a car headlight” in the sky
Visible since Saturday throughout the Northern Hemisphere, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will be every evening “a little higher” in the sky, observable when looking to the West “for ten days”estimates Éric Lagadec. But “each day it will decrease a little in brightness” as it moves away from the Sun, warns the astrophysicist.
How can you be sure not to miss it? Everything happens just after sunset. “You have to look to the horizon, to the west, wait for the sun to go below the horizon and for the sky to be relatively dark”explains Nicolas Biver, astrophysicist at the Laboratory for Space Studies and Instrumentation in Astrophysics at the Paris Observatory, contacted by BFMTV. “It will be a beam of light, like a car headlight that will rise vertically to the horizon”he imagines.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS may have reached a maximum magnitude of 2.4 at its closest crossing point to Earth on Saturday evening. Magnitude consists of a unitless measurement of the brightness of a celestial object within a defined wavelength band. So much so that the star presents serious advantages to claim the title of “comet of the century”according to the Paris Observatory.
Barring obstacles on its route modifying the trajectory, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS follows an orbit which should not bring it closer to the Earth for 80,000 years, Eric Lagadec further specifies to AFP. 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.
A journey counting in millions of years for this comet which probably saw the light of day in the Oort cloud, a hypothetical and gigantic assembly of tiny planets and celestial bodies, at the edge of the solar system.
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