Comet Atlas is getting brighter and could be seen with the naked eye come early April
Comet Hale-Bopp at sunrise on March 21, 1997 (credit: Cherie Benoit at Flickr)
Have you ever seen a bright comet with your naked eyes? The last one of any note was Comet Hale-Bopp way back in 1997, but it’s possible the northern hemisphere is about to get a view of an all-new celestial guests as Comet Atlas brightens.
Get ready for a wild ride. Comet ATLAS (C2019 Y4) is plunging toward the sun, and if it doesn’t fly apart it could soon become one of the brightest comets in years.
“Comet ATLAS continues to brighten much faster than expected,” says Karl Battams of the Naval Research Lab in Washington DC. “Some predictions for its peak brightness now border on the absurd.”
Hale-Bopp: The Great Comet of 1997
Credit & Copyright: Jerry Lodriguss (Catching the Light)
Comet Atlas is a near-parabolic comet, which means it has an eccentric elliptical orbit of the Sun, so visits the inner solar system less than once ever 1,000 years. In fact, this comet only visits us once ever 5,519 years.
The orbit of C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS).
JPL/NASA
C/2019 Y4 currently appears to be close to The Big Dipper.
SKYSAFARI
The comet was discovered in December 2019 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii. Astronomers quickly realized it might be special. On May 31, 2020, Comet ATLAS will pass deep inside the orbit of Mercury only 0.25 AU from the sun. If it can survive the blast furnace of solar heating, it could put on a good show.
However, no one expected the show to start this soon. More than 2 months before perihelion (closest approach to the sun), Comet ATLAS is already “heating up.” The worldwide Comet Observation Database shows it jumping from magnitude +17 in early February to +8 in mid-March–a 4000-fold increase in brightness. It could become visible to the naked eye in early April.
“Right now the comet is releasing huge amounts of its frozen volatiles (gases),” says Battams. “That’s why it’s brightening so fast.”
Current best estimates of the comet’s peak brightness in May range from magnitude +1 to -5. If Comet ATLAS hits the high end of that range, a bit brighter than Venus, it could become visible in broad daylight.
Comet McNaught (C/2006 P1) performed that very trick 13 years ago. On Jan. 13, 2007, it swooped past the sun shining at magnitude -5. The absurdly-bright comet was visible at high noon with its tail jutting across blue sky.
Battams is not optimistic, though: “My personal intuition is that Comet ATLAS is over-achieving, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it start to fade rapidly and possibly even disintegrate before reaching the sun,” he says.
“The Heliospheric Imager on NASA’s STEREO spacecraft will get a great view of ATLAS from mid-May through early June,” says Battams. “The camera is very sensitive, so we might be able to observe ATLAS’s tail interacting with the solar wind and outflows–as well as any potential breakup events.”
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