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Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS should be visible with the naked eye in the night sky tonight (Oct 9). “Astronomers are expecting the comet to be especially vivid, possibly rivaling the brightness of Jupiter in the night sky.”

Discussion  3 comments

CarterB

It is not going to be visible int he night sky tonight (Oct 9th). It is extremely close to the sun (from our alignment right now). Like maybe 2 degrees from the sun. The earliest is probably the 12th and realistically the 14th is probably best. Sky & Telescope has a good finder chart (labeled Oct 12-31 about halfway done).

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/get-ready-for-comet-tsuchinshan-atlas-the-best-is-yet-to-come/

NASA has a live view of the sun (it's blocked out to not overwhelm the sensor) and you can see how close the comet is. Mercury is to the left in the image:

https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/512/

Meg Hourihan

Happy to hear this because it's cloudy in Vermont tonight!

Reply in this thread

Mac Brown

It's visible on the SOHO observatory now! https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/512/

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