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.”
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
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.”
Comments 3
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/
Happy to hear this because it's cloudy in Vermont tonight!
It's visible on the SOHO observatory now! https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/c3/512/
If you feel like this comment goes against the grain of the community guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate, please let me know and I will take a look at it.
This thread is closed for new comments & replies. Thanks to everyone for participating!