Stargazers are in for a special treat over the next few weeks as they get a very rare opportunity to see a comet that is believed to visit our solar system every 80,000 years.

Astronomer Alexei Pace managed to take a photo of the comet - Comet C/2023 A3, otherwise known as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS - on Friday at 6 am from Tal-Virtù in Rabat.

“The photograph shows the comet as a faint but distinct point of light, with its tail pointing towards the upper right-hand side of the image, in the pre-dawn sky above the lights of the Maltese landscape,” said Pace, the former president of the Astronomical Society of Malta.

The first sighting of Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) from Malta, as photographed by Alexei Pace.

This comet has been generating excitement among astronomers and skywatchers alike, as it is expected to become one of the brightest comets visible this year. 

What is a comet?

Comets consist of an ice and rock centre, surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust. They are considered leftovers from the formation of our solar system, about 4.6 billion years ago.

They orbit the sun in highly elliptical orbits that can take hundreds of thousands of years to complete. Every so often, one of these comets makes its way into the inner solar system. As it gets closer to the sun, frozen gases are released creating the tail we often associate with comets. 

What is Comet A3?

Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas gets its longer name from the facilities that first spotted it back in February 2023: the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (or Tsuchinshan Chinese Observatory) and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). 

It is currently at a point called perihelion – its closest approach to the sun.  

Right now it is visible mostly from the earth’s southern hemisphere so from locations like Malta it appears low in the pre-dawn Eastern skies.  It is currently visible through binoculars or small telescopes.

Pace explains that the comet is predicted to brighten further as it approaches its closest point to the Earth on October 12.

At the moment it is visible just before the sun rises at dawn. The light dampens it out making it difficult to see with the naked eye.

After the perihelion, it will not be visible for a couple of days, as it will be “behind the sun”. But when it emerges on the other side  - within about two weeks – it is predicted that it will be visible in the west after sunset.  However, comets are notoriously difficult to predict and a variety of factors can impact their visibility.

“It will reach its brightness peak around mid-October then it will start getting fainter as it continues along its orbit away and back into the depths of space,” Pace said.