Star gazers currently have a rare opportunity to see comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, the brightest comet in the last 13 years.
According to the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT), the comet came closest to Earth, at a distance of about 70.6 million kilometres, on Sunday night, but it will remain visible to the naked eye in the western night sky, close to Venus, until the end of October, depending on weather conditions.
In a cloudless night sky, the ideal time to get a glimpse of the comet is after sunset towards the west. The faint light of its tail can be observed by the naked eye. Binoculars or a telescope will provide a clearer view of the comet, which will revisit Earth in another 80,000 years.
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on February 22nd, 2023. It was also independently observed a few weeks previously, in January 2023, at the Tsuchinshan Chinese Observatory.
