C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS)

Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, also known as the Great Comet of 2024 and formally designated as C/2023 A3, is a non-periodic comet from the Oort cloud discovered by the Purple Mountain Observatory in China on 9 January 2023 and independently found by ATLAS South Africa on 22 February 2023. The comet passed perihelion at a distance of 0.39 AU (58 million km; 36 million mi) on 27 September 2024, when it became visible to the naked eye. Tsuchinshan–ATLAS peaked at its brightest magnitude on 9 October, shortly after passing the Sun, with an apparent magnitude of −4.9 per reported observations at the Comet Observation Database (COBS), making it the brightest comet observed in the Northern Hemisphere since Comet Hale–Bopp in 1997.

Observational history