MENDOTA, Va. (WJHL) — NewsNation affiliate WJHL’s viewer Don Carrier photographed a once-in-80,000-years comet currently passing over Earth in Mendota, Virginia Saturday night.
According to a blog post by NASA, the comet is named ATLAS and was first discovered in 2023 as its orbit approached the inner solar system. NASA said the Oort Cloud comet’s orbit will not bring it back past Earth for another 800 centuries.
“The Oort Cloud comet, called C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, was discovered in 2023, approaching the inner solar system on its highly elliptical orbit for the first time in documented human history,” NASA’s blog said.
NASA said astronomers initially feared the comet would burn and break up as it passed the sun on Sept. 27, but it made it by “more or less intact,” and was within approximately 44 million miles of Earth over the weekend.
“Comets are more fragile than people may realize, thanks to the effects of passing close to the Sun on their internal water ice and volatiles such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide,” said NASA astronomer Bill Cooke, who leads a Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
“Comet Kohoutek, which reached the inner solar system in 1973, broke up while passing too close to the Sun. Comet Ison similarly failed to survive the Sun’s intense heat and gravity during perihelion in 2013.”
NASA’s blog post said the comet’s future is uncertain, and it may never end up orbiting back around to Earth in 80,000 years.
“Cooke noted that it is not expected to draw too near the planetary giants of our system, but eventually could be flung out of the solar system – like a stone from a sling – due to the gravitational influence of other worlds and its own tenuous bond with the Sun,” the post states.