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Post by Ahawkeye on Oct 24, 2024 19:37:01 GMT -5
For anyone interested the comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is visible this evening with a pair of decent binoculars. If you go to your yard and have a view of the West and you take the point from close to straight up and fall in line to the Southwest the comet will be about halfway to the horizon you won't be able to see it with the naked eye, you will see a star with a tail behind it, the tail will have a foggy cloudy look to it. I've never seen one so it was pretty neat for me to see tonight! If you don't get to see it tonight I believe it is still visible for a few more days good luck!
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Post by astronankin on Oct 26, 2024 14:33:13 GMT -5
I'm amazed no one has posted about it until this.... It became visible to the naked eye on October 11th, although most struggled to find it easily until October 13th when it was at it's best. Low altitude plus moonlight didn't help. I viewed it like 7 times in the last 2 weeks.... The amateur astronomy world was excited about this comet from the get-go about a year and a half ago because of certain parameters and orbital mechanics indicating the potential for a Great Comet. To some it doesn't quite fit the bill, because either they weren't able to see it or because they saw Hyakuyake, Hale-Bopp, McNaught, etc and so standards are high for them. But if we had no Full Moon the tail length alone puts this one on the low end of the Great Comet class, similar to NEOWISE from a few years ago, with the community pretty well split on whether it was better than NEOWISE.... 15 degree long naked eye visual tail even with a nearly Full Moon and then a week later (because although the comet had dimmed greatly we no longer had Luna visiting the evening sky). I didn't see NEOWISE, so this is my first naked eye comet, and my 5th comet ever. Very nice naked eye and with a telescope (I was shaking the first time I saw it!), but have to say unfortunately 13P Pons-Brooks, the one that was supposed to be visible between Jupiter and the Sun during the eclipse this spring, totally beat it for color and telescope views..... Don't know what was up with C 2024 A3 not having much color. Comets are usually rather green when they come into the inner solar system.
Will have to find some images to post somewhere.... Not using my Android. Our local astronomy club, the Wabash Valley Astronomical Society, hosted a public comet viewing event on the edge of West Lafayette on October 19th and we had more than 100 members of the public show up, some with binoculars, telescopes, and cameras. Comet put on a decent show for us that night and so did the Milky Way.
Those with good eyes should still be able to see C 2023 A3 in Ophiuchus (large constellation) in the west after sunset around 8:15-9:30 pm. Btw it's lined up with a spur of the Milky Way that juts out in that direction so for those living in a rural area the tail looks like a slight brightening of the Milky Way.
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