{"id":150,"date":"2024-10-10T11:19:16","date_gmt":"2024-10-10T15:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/?p=150"},"modified":"2024-10-10T11:19:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-10T15:19:16","slug":"comet-viewing-catch-it-while-you-can","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/2024\/10\/10\/comet-viewing-catch-it-while-you-can\/","title":{"rendered":"Comet Viewing &#8211; Catch it While You Can"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Comet Viewing &#8211; Catch it While You Can<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">S. M. Gollmer<\/p>\n<p>Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C\/2023 A3) is a once in a lifetime comet, actually once in a million lifetimes.\u00a0 It was discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China over a year ago.\u00a0 A rough estimate of its orbital period is 10 million years, and some predict it will leave the gravitational influence of the sun and never return.\u00a0 \u00a0It reached perihelion (closest approach to the sun)\u00a0on September 27<sup>th<\/sup>, coming as close to the sun as the planet Mercury.\u00a0 It is now speeding away from the sun and will make its closest approach to Earth on October 12<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p>Between tonight and Saturday, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS can be viewed right after sunset near the western horizon.\u00a0 It is currently as bright as the star Sirius but will quickly dim over the next week.\u00a0 There is a trade-off as to the best viewing night.\u00a0 While it is close to the sun, the twilight sky will wash out the brightness of the comet.\u00a0 Each subsequent night the comet can be seen later after sunset providing more contrast.\u00a0 At the same time, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will approach the brightness of ordinary stars.\u00a0 My expectation of best viewing, given clear skies, is October 12<sup>th<\/sup> when it can be seen up to an hour after sunset.<\/p>\n<p>Make sure you take this opportunity to view Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.\u00a0 Seeing the tail of the comet streaming away from the sun is a sight rarely seen.\u00a0 The last time I had this experience was viewing comet Hale Bopp in 1995.\u00a0 Binoculars and telescopes allow you to view this comet until the end of October, but now is the time to see it with your own eyes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Comet Viewing &#8211; Catch it While You Can S. M. Gollmer Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C\/2023 A3) is a once in a lifetime comet, actually once in a million lifetimes.\u00a0 It was discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China over a year ago.\u00a0 A rough estimate of its orbital period is 10 million years, and some predict&#8230; <a class=\"view-article\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/2024\/10\/10\/comet-viewing-catch-it-while-you-can\/\">View Article<\/a>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cedarville.edu\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}