MENDOTA, Va. (WJHL) — Information Channel 11 viewer Don Provider photographed a once-in-80,000-years comet lately passing over Earth in Mendota, Virginia Saturday evening.
In keeping with a weblog put up by way of NASA, the comet is called ATLAS and was once first found out in 2023 as its orbit approached the internal sun device. NASA stated the Oort Cloud comet’s orbit is not going to deliver it again previous Earth for any other 800 centuries.
Photograph: Donald Provider, Mendota, Va. 10/12/2024
“The Oort Cloud comet, known as C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, was once found out in 2023, coming near the internal sun device on its extremely elliptical orbit for the primary time in documented human historical past,” NASA’s weblog stated.
NASA stated astronomers to begin with feared the comet would burn and get a divorce because it handed the solar on Sept. 27, but it surely made it by way of “kind of intact,” and was once inside roughly 44 million miles of Earth over the weekend.
“Comets are extra fragile than other people would possibly understand, due to the results of passing on the subject of the Solar on their inner water ice and volatiles corresponding to carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide,” stated NASA astronomer Invoice Cooke, who leads a Meteoroid Atmosphere Place of work on the Marshall Area Flight Heart in Huntsville, Alabama.
“Comet Kohoutek, which reached the internal sun device in 1973, broke up whilst passing too on the subject of the Solar. Comet Ison in a similar way did not live to tell the tale the Solar’s intense warmth and gravity all over perihelion in 2013.”
NASA’s weblog put up stated the comet’s long term is unsure, and it will by no means finally end up orbiting again round to Earth in 80,000 years.
“Cooke famous that it’s not anticipated to attract too close to the planetary giants of our device, however in the end may well be flung out of the sun device – like a stone from a sling – because of the gravitational affect of alternative worlds and its personal tenuous bond with the Solar,” the put up states.
