Week 41, 2024: Two Comets Might Become the Brightest Seen from Earth since 1965!
The month of October 2024 is an exciting time to be a comet hunter/photographer as there's not only one, but two potentially bright naked eye comets appearing in the night sky!
During the latter half of September 2024, comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) has become a bright naked eye object in the early morning skies, with many people eagerly anticipating its peak by Oct. 12. Then, shortly after passing perihelion on Sept. 27, the same ATLAS team who discovered this comet has spotted another one, C/2024 S1 (ATLAS), which turned out to be an unusually large Kreutz sungrazer, about to approach the Sun by Oct. 28. Calculations and predictions of both comets indicate that both comets could potentially reach peak magnitudes as high as -4.8 and -8.4 respectively, and if both remain intact they could become one of the brightest comets ever seen since Ikeya-Seki in 1965!
Both Tsuchinshan-ATLAS and C/2024 S1 are available for download as add-ons for Celestia
Source: StarWalk, Sky & Telescope
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)
San Rafael, Bulacan, Philippines, 2024-Sept-26 (Credit: John Pile)
Auckland, New Zealand, 2024-Sept-28 (Credit: Alex Liang)
Tivoli, Namibia, 2024-Oct-2 (Credit: Michael Jäger)
Llullailaco Volcano, Chile, 2024-Oct-4 (Credit: Paranal Observatory)
C/2024 S1 (ATLAS)
Tivoli, Namibia, 2024-Sept-30 (Credit: Michael Jäger)
Queensland, Australia, 2024-Oct-6 (Credit: Terry Lovejoy)