The name is a mouthful but Comet 2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) could be the brightest comet seen in our skies in years.
The comet was discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory on 9 January 2023 and independently found by ATLAS South Africa on 22 February 2023. The comet will pass perihelion at a distance of 0.39 AU (58 million km; 36 million mi) on 27 September 2024, when it could become visible to the naked eye. (Modified text from Wikipedia).
The fact that the comet is on its first visit to the inner Solar System is generating a lot of excitement. We won’t know however until this October when it hopefully survives its close enounter with the Sun.
The above image was taken only a few days ago using a Seestar S50 telescope. At the time, the comet was still 266 million years ago. The fact that the comet is currently so bright (+10 magnitude) astronomically speaking is why the amateur astronomy community is so excited. Note that this is much fainter than what the human eye can see.
I am excited by the fact that I could image the comet so far from the Sun. The circumstances remind me of seeing Comet Hyakutake in 1996. I saw it visually as a faint blob before it came anywhere near the inner solar system. My (then) baby daughter woke the household up early in the morning for a feed. I stumbled outside to look for the comet not expecting anything. This was because it was located low on the horizon. I was rewarded by the stunning sight of the comet’s tail stretching upwards from near the horizon like a spotlight. The tail covered at least a quarter of the sky (in length)!
