Ted Kujanski shared a picture of a comet which he took on Tuesday evening, October 15. He writes, “We were outside for about 45 minutes. On our back deck, eyes on the sky, I had my cell phone in hand. I took a guess that what I saw was the comet. When we came in I viewed the comet pic. What a STREAK OF LUCK.”
It appears that what Ted saw is a comet called Tsunchinshan-ATLAS (Comet A3), which has traveled here from beyond the solar system. It was discovered in China in January, 2023, and independently found in South Africa the next month. It was determined that the comet would bring it close enough to both the Sun and the Earth in September/October 2024 to possibly be seen by the naked eye.
According to BBC Sky at Night magazine, sure enough, for the past several days and at least through Friday evening, October 18 and possibly through the weekend, “If you want to see Comet A3 all you have to do is go out half an hour or so after sunset, face the west, and there it is, right before your eyes – a misty streak of light low in the sky, to the upper right of the bright planet Venus…..It has a narrow dust tail more than a dozen degrees long, which is obvious to the naked eye from a dark sky site and fascinating to trace in binoculars. It is also sporting an ‘anti-tail’, a very sharp spike of material jutting out of its head like a celestial unicorn horn, pointing towards the horizon.” Astronomers say it won’t return to this point in its orbit for at least 80,000 years.
Our thanks to Ted Kujanski for sharing this “streak of luck” photo with us.
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