This October will see a once-in-80,000-year event, when Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS passes by Earth. First spotted in 2023, the comet (technically called C/2023 A3), which has been billed the “comet of the century” by some in the astronomy community, could be so bright that it outshines the stars around it in the sky, and even the planets Jupiter and Venus. Just how spectacular the comet is remains to be seen, as it is hard to predict how comets will appear in advance, but the possibility has skywatchers around the world excited for the event.
Whether you are able to see the comet with the naked eye depends on whether it will be as bright as optimists hope. “We’re all really excited about the prospect of the Comet A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) and how it might just be a nice bright object in the night sky,” said the Royal Astronomical Society’s Robert Massey. “I would think that you’re going to need a pair of binoculars to pick it out, or a telescope if you have the right kind of telescope with a wide field and you know exactly where to look. But who knows, it might be visible to the naked eye as well. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Comets glow brightly because they are balls of rock and ice, and when they approach the sun that ice begins to sublimate into gas. The ice particles reflects the sun’s light, making them appear to shine, and the gas being given off gives them their signature tail. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is currently passing by the sun, but it will likely be at its brightest when it passes by Earth in mid-October.
You can start looking out for the comet now by looking to the constellation Sextans, according the Planetary Society, by looking to the east around an hour before sunrise (for those in the Northern Hemisphere). It will get brighter as we approach mid-October, and your best chance to get a good view is to find somewhere away from cities or other sources of bright lights and to look just above the horizon.
If you’re interested in trying to photograph the comet, that should be possible too. “It helps if you’ve got a good DSLR camera and can take a series of exposures — a lot of astrophotographers do so successfully,” Massey said. “Also, if you have a good mobile phone camera and a small telescope, you can hold the mobile phone against the eyepiece of the telescope and try to take a picture that way. That worked well with comets like NEOWISE and it might work well with this one, depending on how bright it is.
“And if it’s genuinely easy to spot, you might, might be able to pick up your mobile phone, rest on something, and just point and shoot.”
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.