Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) over Chile
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Astrophotographer Yuri Beletsky: "I captured this image this morning at 09:22 UTC from Carnegie Las Campanas observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile. The view was absolutely spectacular! The clouds were constantly moving just above the horizon, but we got really lucky when the comet suddenly appeared just above the layer of clouds. I used a Nikon D810a camera + 135mm lens. This is a stack of 15 x 5 sec exposures."
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is a comet from the solar system's Oort cloud discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory east of Nanjing, China, on January 9, 2023, and independently found by the automated Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in South Africa on February 22, 2023. ATLAS is funded by NASA's planetary defense office, and developed and operated by the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy. C/2023 A3 will pass perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) at a distance of 0.39 AU (58 million km; 36 million miles) on September 27, 2024. This is when it can be best viewed with the naked eye from the ground on Earth.
The Oort cloud is theorized to be a vast cloud of icy planetesimals surrounding the Sun at distances ranging from 2,000 to 200,000 AU (0.03 to 3.2 light-years). The concept of such a cloud was proposed in 1950 by the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort, in whose honor the idea was named. Oort proposed that the bodies in this cloud replenish and keep constant the number of long-period comets entering the inner Solar System—where they are eventually consumed and destroyed during close approaches to the Sun.
Image Credit: Yuri Beletsky
Yuri's website:
https://www.instagram.com/yuribeletsky/
Location: Las Campanas Observatory, Chile
Image Date: Sept. 24, 2024
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