Where and How to See the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Comet This Week

15.10.2024 - 19:59 / cntraveler.com

For the next week or more, night sky gazers will be able to witness the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet streaking past Earth. Don't forget to keep your eyes peeled—it's not often a comet is bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, and this specific comet won't be back for another 80,000 years.

In order to get this close to Earth, the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet traveled all the way from the Oort Cloud on the edge of our solar system and survived its journey past the Sun (where most comets, known as “dirty snowballs" because of their icy constitution, crumble under the intense heat).

“This is the brightest comet since Comet McNaught in 2006,” Bill Cooke, the lead of NASA's Meteoroid Environments Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center, tells Condé Nast Traveler. "18 years is a long time to wait for an easy-to-see comet.”

The rare celestial event will be visible throughout the rest of October, with visibility peaking on October 9 and growing less visible each day. Here's how to see the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet while you still can.

For your best chance of spotting the comet, look for it “low in the Western sky about 45 minutes after sunset,” Cooke says. “It currently sets about 8 p.m. local time, so folks have about an hour to take a look. As the nights pass, it will grow fainter and fainter, requiring binoculars or a small telescope in 7 to 10 days.”

The comet is most visible north of the Equator in areas without too much light pollution. This means observers in larger US cities may not be able to see Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, but it is visible from the suburbs. The light from the full moon on October 17 will make it more difficult to spot the comet, with the sky darkening as the moon wanes in the latter half of the month.

“One should try to find the darkest sky they can—definitely worth a trip into the countryside,” Cooke tells Traveler. "I always recommend people use binoculars if they have them, as it really enhances the view. But even an iPhone shows a very nice tail."

To best appreciate this rare comet sighting, it's helpful to understand what exactly you're looking at and how it compares to meteors and asteroids—fellow space travelers with their own unique qualities.

NASA defines comets as “frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock, and ices,” earning them the nicknames “icy dirtball” and “dirty snowball." They orbit the sun in elliptical paths; some, like Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, cross into Earth's orbit.

Photographers will be eager to capture the tail of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, formed when a comet's icy insides are vaporized by the sun's heat, releasing gas and dust in its wake. A comet's tail can stretch for millions of miles.

Meanwhile, meteors—also called shooting stars—are