Wow, this comet just gets more interesting.
Last time it may have been this way was approximately when Kantek exploded, and “angels fell to earth”.
“Discovery and naming
The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (
ATLAS) telescope in South Africa discovered Comet C/2023 A3 on February 22, 2023.
Additionally, observers at
Purple Mountain (Zijin Shin or Tsuchinshan) Observatory in China found the comet independently on images from January 9, 2023. Therefore, the comet also has the nickname Tsuchinshan-ATLAS.
At discovery, the comet was still 7.3 astronomical units (AU) from the sun, and shining at a dim magnitude of 18.
Preliminary analysis of its trajectory suggests Comet A3 completes an orbit around the sun every 80,660 years.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s been here before or will be back in 80,000 years. According to
Karl Battams, a scientist who works on the SOHO/LASCO and Sungrazer Project for the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, the comet is most certainly dynamically new from the Oort Cloud and it’s not possible to model back if it had been near the sun in the ancient past. Battams also
said:
“
Its orbit has now been tweaked (shortened) by the sun but still is absurdly long, and puts it back out into the Oort Cloud where, more than likely, it’ll get nudged again by a passing star system, and will never return. … So Neanderthals definitely did NOT see this comet, and some distant alien civilization is more likely than humans are to see it.”
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS is a long-period comet, with an 80,000-year orbit around the sun. In this illustration, the turquoise line represents the path of A3 into the inner solar system. Its orbit around the sun is retrograde, meaning that the comet moves in the opposite direction to most major solar system planets. Its perihelion distance – closest point to the sun – came on September 27, 2024, when it was 0.39 astronomical units (
AU, or Earth-sun distances) from our star. The comet was closest to Earth on October 12. Image via
University of Arizona/
CSS/ D. Rankin.
earthsky.org