“The comet of the century”

A new Comet is coming called C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS or in its translation Purple Mountain-ATLAS but some media are already calling it the comet of the century, its complex name is due to the fact that two groups of researchers discovered it, one in China at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing and the other in South Africa at the Smith Telescope in Sutherland.

The important thing is the question that we always ask ourselves in the case of Comets, will it be visible to the naked eye? According to astronomers, yes, it can be seen from all over the world, although it will be quite weak, but yes, it will look more intense than Comet 12p. Pons bruns called Comet Diablo, by the media and which had its closest approach to the earth on June 2, 2024 at 230 million km, that is many millions of kilometers.

And this coming one is going to pass much closer, the key dates are September 27 of this year, that day the new Comet will have its closest approach to the sun at 58 million km, which is more or less the distance at which Mercury orbits. the sun and a little later on October 12 the Comet will pass 71 million kilometers from the earth, it will be its closest approach to us, a more than safe distance, but much closer than what Comet Diablo passed.

Astronomers hope to confirm the brightness of the comet in August and therefore the fact that it can be visible to the naked eye. The brightness of Los Cometas has a fairly large margin of error because comets are basically made up of ice of different elements and depending on The heat they receive from the Sun and the type of elements they are composed of can glow more or less or they can even disintegrate and explode in a cloud of vapor.

What do we know about this comet; first; We know that when it was first sighted on January 9, 2023, it was far beyond Jupiter's orbit, about 1090 million kilometers from the sun; Second, we know that it comes from very far away from the Oort cloud, the outermost region of the solar system where billions of comets live, some perhaps older than the solar system itself.

This is possible because that area is affected by the passage of nearby stars and is an area where the sun can end up capturing or exchanging comets with other stars; Third, we know that it is not very big although it is estimated that its nucleus has a respectable size of about 5 km in diameter, but for example Comet Diablo has a nucleus of 30 km in diameter, that is a big comet.

5 km would be in Bortle's survival limit, it is a limit that indicates how possible it is for a comet to disintegrate when passing near the Sun. In this case it seems that the comet will endure, but it will surely survive and fourth question; When it passes it will continue on its path to where, it is not clear, because some data is still missing, but the Comet has a weakly hyperbolic trajectory which may cause the sun to end up throwing it out of the solar system and it ends up becoming an Interstellar comet wandering through the stars for millions of years.

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