So far this year, Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas has been the comet of the year. This comet was discovered on January 9th, 2023 at the Purple Mountain Observatory in China. It was later verified by the ATLAS system in South Africa in February 2023. ATLAS stands for Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System.
 |
| Image by Erik Swindlehurst |
Astronomers believe that the comet's origins is from the Oort Cloud. The Oort cloud is a theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). |
| NASA / JPL-Caltech (Public Domain) |
Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas passedby the Sun on October 9th, 2024 and it immediately reached it's brightest magnitude. I took a few pictures of the comet with my Google Pixel 8 phone using "night sight" that uses a six second exposure. I got better images with my Canon EOS R10 Camera using a tripod.
 |
| Image by Erik Swindlehurst |
 |
| Image by Erik Swindlehurst |
WHAT IS A COMET?
A comet is a fascinating celestial object composed primarily of ice, dust, and rocky material. These “dirty snowballs” orbit the Sun and are best known for their spectacular tails, which become visible when they approach the Sun and start to heat up.
Key Features of a Comet:
- Nucleus: The solid core made of ice and rock, typically a few kilometers across.
- Coma: A cloud of gas and dust that forms around the nucleus when the comet gets close to the Sun.
- Tails: Comets have two types of tails. The dust tail is made of small particles and curves away from the comet’s path, while the ion tail is made of gases that are ionized by the Sun’s radiation and always points directly away from the Sun.
Comets originate from two main regions in our solar system:
Kuiper Belt: Located beyond Neptune’s orbit, home to short-period comets that take less than 200 years to orbit the Sun.
Oort Cloud: A distant, spherical shell surrounding the solar system, where long-period comets come from. These comets can take thousands of years to complete an orbit.
Comets are like time capsules, holding material from the early solar system, which makes them incredibly valuable for scientific study.
Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas coma is believed to be 130,000 miles across. That means that our planet Earth fit in the coma over 16 times. The tail of this comet is measured at 18 million miles. It would take 11 days for Earth to traverse the distance of this comet's tail!!
I created a YouTube short video if you are interested in seeing more of this comet. If you want to see this comet again, you'll have to wait over 80,000 years. Until next time, take care.
