A comet can be seen with the naked eye on Sunday in Portugal, in a short window of opportunity that opens at 7:35pm (Lisbon time).
This is comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, discovered in January 2023 by telescopes at the Tsuchinshan Observatory, in China, and confirmed by the ATLAS telescope in South Africa.
Speaking to Lusa, the astronomer Nuno Peixinho said that if the sky observation conditions are still cloudless, comet visible with the naked eye in Portugal on Sunday “40 minutes after sunset, looking to the West, that is, at 7:35 pm”.
According to the researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences, “the window of opportunity” to observe the comet, preferably from a place with little light pollution, is “small”, because after 8pm “it is already very low on the horizon and will be very difficult to see.”
Nuno Peixinho draws attention to “not to confuse” the comet with “the strong brightness of the planet Venus”, which, in the distance, will be on the left.
On Sunday, the Geophysical and Astronomical Observatory of the University of Coimbra will promote an observation session between 7:20 pm and 8 pm.
On that day, according to Nuno Peixinho, the comet will be close to 71 million kilometers from Earth and just over 82 million kilometers from the Sun, when “the average distance from Earth to the Sun, called an astronomical unit, about 150 million kilometers”.
According to the astrophysicist, the comet could still be seen next week, but probably only with the help of a telescope, as it loses brightness every day as it moves further and further away from Earth and the Sun.
After passing close to Earth, comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will continue its journey through Earth’s borders. The solar systemperhaps under the influence of the gravity of other planets or stars.
Orbital models suggest that the comet will not come close to Earth again for hundreds of thousands of years, if it ever returns.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS originates from the Oort Cloud, a vast and distant reservoir of icy bodies that surrounds the Solar System.
Before it was visible in October in the Northern Hemisphere, the comet was visible at the end of September in the Southern Hemisphere, to the East on the horizon, at dawn.
By definition, comets are heavenly bodies formed of ice, dust and small rock fragments. As they approach the Sun, their brightness increases, as the icy substances that make them up sublime, generating a diffuse atmosphere around their core, known as a coma. , and a tail, pointing in the opposite direction to the Sun.
2024-10-12 22:52:00
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