Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

Comet C/2023 A3 the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, was named after two observatories who discovered it, the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (also known as the Zijinshan Astronomical Observatory), and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). ATLAS, is a group of four telescopes (two in Hawaii, one in Chile, and one in South Africa) that scan the sky each night looking for moving objects.

Hmm, wonder if they’ve seen other things?

Tuesday October 15th, 2024, was one of the best opportunities to see the comet at its brightest and best from the northern hemisphere here in Texas. Since it won’t return for around 80,000 years and I doubt I’ll be around to see it again, it was definitely worth seeing. On that Tuesday, the comet’s distance from the sun was 57.4 million miles and its distance from the Earth was 46.4 million miles.

The Tsuchinshan Observatory was first to spot the comet on January 9, 2023, then on February 22nd, the South African ATLAS telescope saw it. The following video was shot with my SIONYX Aurora PRO camera. I used this color night vision camera because we had a bright moon which was washing out the night sky making the comet hard to see.

Blog Links:
ATLAS:
https://atlas.fallingstar.com/
Purple Mountain Observatory:
http://www.pmo.ac.cn/
The Sky Live:
https://theskylive.com/c2023a3-info
Earth Sky:
https://earthsky.org/space/comet-c-2023-a3-sep-oct-2024-tsuchinshan-atlas/
Forbes.com:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2024/10/15/comet-tracker-for-tuesday-tonight-is-your-last-best-chance-to-see-it-for-80000-years/

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