PARIS: A comet is expected to risk having its tail clipped on Friday by flying perilously close to the Sun, promising fireworks next month should it survive the fraught flypast.

Astronomers believe the Tsuchinshan-ATLAS comet has been hurtling headfirst through the void of space towards the centre of the Solar System for millions of years.

The ball of rock and ice may have formed at a distance up to 400,000 times that between Earth and the Sun, models suggest.

Up till now, one had to be in the southern hemisphere to hope to see it with the naked eye.

But on Saturday morning it is projected to cross as close to the Sun as it will get, before returning towards Earth.

From Oct 13 the comet will be visible in the northern hemisphere.

If the weather is right “it will jump to the eye” every night “in the direction of the setting sun”, Lucie Maquet, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory, said.

‘Catastrophe is possible’

But that forecast assumes the comet does not fly too close to the Sun.

When comets approach our star, the melting ice contained at their core lets out a long trail of dust which reflects sunlight.

This characteristic tail is also the sign the comet is degassing. If the Sun affects the comet too much, it risks disintegrating.

As the cluster of frozen water and rock “may not resist the force of the Sun’s gravity”, a catastrophe “is always possible”, Maquet said.

The good news is that the comet, officially named “C/2023 A3” by scientists, seems to have a rather massive core. So “there’s a good chance it will survive” its sunny pass-by, the astronomer said.

Initial forecasts predicting the comet would be especially bright as it visited our skies have since been revised down.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2024