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topicnews · October 16, 2024

Look at the comet shooting across the sky – it won’t come back for another 80,000 years – Orange County Register

Look at the comet shooting across the sky – it won’t come back for another 80,000 years – Orange County Register

If you look at the sky just after sunset, you might see something that won’t be visible for 80,000 years.

Photographers, astronomy enthusiasts and anyone who wants to catch a glimpse of something special have been scanning the sky with eyes and lenses to watch the flyby of comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas, which is close enough to Earth – an estimated 44 million miles away – to see it with the naked eye.

The space rock passed closest to Earth on Saturday and will be visible until the end of October.

Wildlife photographer Pam Kinsman Haselton, who lives near Lake Placid, New York, was in town this week for a reunion at Dana Hills High School.

She usually spends her days climbing mountains to capture sunsets or walking by the lake at sunrise.

So when she heard about the comet possibly appearing, she couldn’t help but pull out her camera to try and document the moment and met up with fellow photographer Tony Prince, who has also been her mentor over the years .

They wanted to take photos at sunset on Sunday, October 14th, but the comet was not visible.

She had almost lost hope when the next evening, October 15th, she heard friends shouting, “Come quickly!”

And there it was, visible just at sunset as the fog cleared, fully visible as it shot toward the ocean at Poche Beach in Dana Point, the colorful sunset framing the comet.

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Wildlife photographer Pam Kinsman Haselton captured images of Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas from Dana Point shortly after sunset on October 14, 2024. (Photo courtesy of Kinsman Haselton)

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“It was just a stroke of luck,” she said. “The heavens opened briefly.”

“This moment is difficult to describe in words,” she said.

“It was pure joy and excitement at what we saw,” she said. “We knew it was so rare. It’s probably something we’ll never do again. We all jumped up and down screaming. It was perfect.”

Prince was able to film the comet on October 15 from Ortega Highway, where light pollution was least. Others flocked to Griffith Park Observatory and other locations with high-powered telescopes to enjoy the rare sight.

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Comet C/2023 A3 (ATLAS-Tsuchinshan) is visible in the sky over the Great Salt Lake west of Salt Lake City, Utah, shortly after sunset on Monday, October 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Spenser Heaps)

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According to NASA, comets are frozen remnants of the formation of the solar system, made up of dust, rock and ice. They range in width from a few kilometers to dozens of kilometers, but as they approach the sun they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head that can be larger than a planet.

This material forms a tail that stretches for millions of kilometers.

Some comets do not survive close encounters with the Sun. If they get too close, radiation and gravitational forces can disintegrate them.

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