A bright comet will be visible in Colorado starting Saturday

Colorado sky watchers who have marveled at several Northern Lights in recent days will have another reason to relax over the next two weeks with the appearance of a comet in the western sky after sunset.

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS should come into view for sky watchers in Colorado starting around dusk Saturday evening. Astronomy experts think it should be visible for about two weeks, appearing slightly higher in the sky each night. They expect it to be as bright as the brightest stars.

“Compared to Haley's Comet, this one is said to be much brighter,” said Aislynn Mills of Mile High Astronomy, a Lakewood store that sells binoculars, telescopes and other astronomical supplies.

According to the astronomy site space.com, the comet's head is about 130,000 miles in diameter and its tail stretches about 18 million miles. It circled the sun this week in a highly elliptical orbit and is making its way back into space through the inner solar system.

“The comet will virtually rise to evening prominence in mid-October,” the space.com post says. “On October 12, at twilight (45 minutes after sunset), find Tsuchinshan-ATLAS about 6 degrees above the west-southwest horizon. Your clenched fist at arm's length measures 10 degrees in width, so the comet is about “half a fist” above the horizon and will set (fall below the horizon) about 90 minutes after sunset.

Next week's post explains that A3's apparent height above the horizon rises about 3 degrees each evening and sets about 16 minutes later. Generally, it follows the path that the sun and moon take across the sky. By the end of next week it is expected to be “three fists” above the west-southwest horizon in “mid-twilight” and will set three and a half hours after sunset.

A comet consists of a nucleus (nucleus), a coma, a hydrogen shell and two tails.

“The core is the icy, rocky core — the physical thing that travels through space,” said Mills, who has a degree in astrophysics from the University of Colorado. “As it approaches the sun, it sublimes the ice into gas, the (coma) we see around the core. Then there is an invisible hydrogen shell – hydrogen leaking out around the coma – and the tails, a trail of ions and dust.”

This comet is so named because it was discovered in 2023 by the Tsuchinshan Observatory in China and the Asteroid Terrestial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). The latter was founded by NASA and works at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii to detect objects that could impact the Earth.

But don't worry, this comet won't do that.

Mile High Astronomy has released a 28-minute video explaining comets and how to view and photograph them. If you are looking for binoculars to see the comet, the staff there recommend choosing 7×50, which is seven times magnification with a 50 millimeter front lens. The diameter of this lens determines the light-gathering ability of the binoculars. For example, 7×50 binoculars have almost twice the light gathering ability of 7×35 binoculars.

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Originally published: October 11, 2024 at 1:26 p.m

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