How to catch the super rare comet over the Ozarks tonight

We have another reason to turn our eyes to the sky tonight, thanks to the extremely rare Comet Tsuchinshan (choo-cheen-shahn). For one week, the comet will be visible to the naked eye and will reach its peak on Wednesday, October 16.

Since Monday, people have been seeing the comet streak across the early-night sky in the Northern Hemisphere. Simply seeing a comet with the naked eye is extremely rare. If you don’t see the Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), you’re out of luck. It won’t come back around for another 80,000 years.

How to view the comet

Head outside about 45 minutes after the sunset. On Wednesday, the sunset will be at 6:34 p.m. Turn to the west, where the full Harvest Moon will be at your back. Look for a bright star, not too far above the horizon. This is Venus. Just to the right and a little above Venus will be where the comet is visible.

What is a comet?

According to NASA , comets are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system. Comets are composed of space dust, rock and ice. They can be a few miles, to tens of miles wide. As they orbit the Sun, the heat up, spewing gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet. The flying space dust forms a talk that stretches for millions of miles.

Tsuchinshan is about 42 times the size of the full moon. Since it is passing so close to the sun, more space debris than normal is creating an impressive tail.

When was it discovered?

The impressive comet was discovered less than two years ago. Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) was discovered on February 22, 2023 using the ATLAS telescope. The first glimpse was captured in early January 2023 by a telescope at Purple Mountain Observatory (Tsuchinshan).

NASA says comets are usually named after their discoverer – either a person or spacecraft. The Tsuchinshan-Atlas is based on when and where the comet was first seen:

• The letter C indicates a non-periodic comet. Comets like this may pass through the Solar System only once or takes 200 to thousands of years to orbit the sun.
• The 2023 stands for the year it was discovered, and the A corresponds to the first half of January (from the IAU comet naming system).
• Tsuchinshan-ATLAS shows the comet was realized by two telescopes.

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