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Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 "Gang Of Four"
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By European Space Agency
Video: 00:00:23 From 7 until 13 October 2024, ESA/NASA’s SOHO spacecraft recorded Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS), the second brightest comet it has ever seen. Meanwhile, large amounts of material were being spewed out by the Sun (covered in the centre), and planet Mercury is visible to the left.
The comet’s nucleus is clearly visible, surrounded by a dusty coma and trailing an impressively long tail. SOHO sees the large dust tail edge-on, curving in on itself as it is pushed outward by solar wind.
At the end of the video you can also see a rare phenomenon known as an ‘anti-tail’: a long, thin line that points towards the Sun. This tail is an optical illusion coming from SOHO getting an edge-on view of the larger cometary dust particles that accumulate in the comet’s orbital plane.
Comet C/2023 A3 was seen for the first time early last year. It most likely came from the distant Oort cloud, and the last time this comet flew through the inner Solar System (if ever) was at least 80 000 years ago.
The comet reached an estimated peak brightness just beyond –4 magnitude. (The more negative the visual magnitude value, the brighter the object.) Of the more than 5000 comets SOHO has seen flying past the Sun, only Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) was brighter, with a visual magnitude of –5.5.
SOHO’s location between the Sun and Earth gave it a front-row seat, but the same comet has been visible from Earth every evening since 12 October 2024. Throughout October, as the comet moves farther away from the Sun, it will gradually grow fainter and rise higher up in the western sky.
The week that SOHO watched Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS was also a wild one in terms of space weather. The Sun unleashed no less than 4 X-class flares (the highest intensity type of flare), 28 medium-intensity M-class flares, and 31 coronal mass ejections – the latter being visible as white clouds of material in the video. All this activity led to two geomagnetic storms on Earth, resulting in beautiful auroras lighting up the night sky.
SOHO, short for Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, is a joint ESA-NASA mission to study the Sun. For almost 29 years now, it has been watching the Sun itself as well as the much fainter light coming from the Sun’s outer atmosphere, called the solar corona. The data shown in this video were taken by the LASCO C3 coronagraph instrument.
Special thanks to Simeon Schmauß, who processed the raw data to create this impressive video. For comparison, here is a video of the comet with more standard data processing – the comet is so bright that it partially saturated SOHO’s sensor.
What types of comets are there?
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By NASA
NASA/Matthew Dominick NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick captured this timelapse photo of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) International Space Station as it orbited 272 miles above the South Pacific Ocean southeast of New Zealand just before sunrise on Sept. 28, 2024. At the time, the comet was about 44 million miles away from Earth.
Though the comet is very old, it was just discovered in 2023, when it approached the inner solar system on its highly elliptical orbit for the first time in documented human history. Beginning in mid-October 2024, Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) will become visible low in the west following sunset. If the comet’s tail is well-illuminated by sunlight, it could be visible to the unaided eye. Oct. 14-24 is the best time to observe, using binoculars or a small telescope.
The comet hails from the Oort Cloud, which scientists think is a giant spherical shell surrounding our solar system. It is like a big, thick-walled bubble made of icy pieces of space debris the sizes of mountains and sometimes larger. The Oort Cloud lies far beyond Pluto and the most distant edges of the Kuiper Belt and may contain billions, or even trillions, of objects.
Image Credit: NASA/Matthew Dominick
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By NASA
2 min read
ESA/NASA’s SOHO Spies Bright Comet Making Debut in Evening Sky
The tail of comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS spanned the view of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on Oct. 10, 2024. ESA/NASA The ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has captured images of the second-brightest comet to ever pass through its field of view during the spacecraft’s nearly 29-year career.
The bright comet is C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which has been garnering a lot of attention from skywatchers recently, displaying a long, dusty tail in pre-dawn skies throughout late September and early October. (Comet McNaught, viewed in 2007, holds the record as the brightest comet SOHO has seen.)
Between Oct. 7 and 11, the comet blazed through the view of SOHO’s LASCO (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Experiment) instrument, which uses a disk to block out the bright light of the Sun so it’s easier to see details and objects near the Sun. This image, taken by SOHO on Oct. 10, 2024, shows the comet and its bright tail streaming from the upper left to the right. Mercury appears as a bright dot on the left.
After crossing through SOHO’s field of view, the comet will begin putting on an evening show for skywatchers around the world just after sunset starting Saturday, Oct. 12. Each day throughout October, the comet will gradually rise higher and higher in the western sky as it moves farther away from the Sun. But as it does, it will become fainter and fainter. Eagle-eyed skywatchers may be able to spot it with the naked eye for a few days, but after that, observers will likely need binoculars or a telescope to see it as it grows fainter.
Even if you are unable to spot this comet yourself, you can help SOHO search for others. Scientists and members of the general public have discovered more than 5,000 comets in SOHO imagery, and you can help find even more by visiting the Sungrazer Project.
By Vanessa Thomas
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
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Last Updated Oct 11, 2024 Related Terms
Comets Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Heliophysics Division Skywatching SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) The Sun The Sun & Solar Physics Explore More
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By NASA
2 min read
Voyager 1 Returning Science Data From All Four Instruments
An artist’s concept of the Voyager spacecraft. NASA/JPL-Caltech The spacecraft has resumed gathering information about interstellar space.
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is conducting normal science operations for the first time following a technical issue that arose in November 2023.
The team partially resolved the issue in April when they prompted the spacecraft to begin returning engineering data, which includes information about the health and status of the spacecraft. On May 19, the mission team executed the second step of that repair process and beamed a command to the spacecraft to begin returning science data. Two of the four science instruments returned to their normal operating modes immediately. Two other instruments required some additional work, but now, all four are returning usable science data.
The four instruments study plasma waves, magnetic fields, and particles. Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the only spacecraft to directly sample interstellar space, which is the region outside the heliosphere — the protective bubble of magnetic fields and solar wind created by the Sun.
While Voyager 1 is back to conducting science, additional minor work is needed to clean up the effects of the issue. Among other tasks, engineers will resynchronize timekeeping software in the spacecraft’s three onboard computers so they can execute commands at the right time. The team will also perform maintenance on the digital tape recorder, which records some data for the plasma wave instrument that is sent to Earth twice per year. (Most of the Voyagers’ science data is sent directly to Earth and not recorded.)
Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and Voyager 2 is more than 12 billion miles (20 billion kilometers) from the planet. The probes will mark 47 years of operations later this year. They are NASA’s longest-running and most-distant spacecraft. Both spacecraft flew past Jupiter and Saturn, while Voyager 2 also flew past Uranus and Neptune.
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
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Last Updated Jun 13, 2024 Related Terms
Heliophysics Jet Propulsion Laboratory Voyager 1 Explore More
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