The saga of Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (pronounced Choo-cheen-SHAHN -ATLAS), is now coming down the home stretch. When the Purple Mountain Observatory (Tsuchinshan) near Nanjing, China photographed a faint object in mid-January 2023, it was initially thought to be an asteroid.
Six weeks later on Feb. 23, the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in South Africa photographed the same object, which determined it was actually a comet. At the time it was a very distant and inconspicuous object, but its orbital motion at once made it clear that by the fall of 2024, this comet could evolve into a naked-eye object of considerable interest for Northern Hemisphere observers.
