{"id":264483,"date":"2026-02-02T22:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T22:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/264483\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T22:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T22:00:15","slug":"comet-visits-stargazers-on-kitt-peak-photo-of-the-day-for-feb-2-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/264483\/","title":{"rendered":"Comet visits stargazers on Kitt Peak photo of the day for Feb. 2, 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

For eager skywatchers, comets<\/a> offer a rare opportunity to observe some of our solar system’s most dynamic objects. These icy visitors spend most of their existence in the cold outer reaches of the solar system<\/a>, only occasionally swinging close enough to the sun for their ices to vaporize and flare into a luminous coma and tail.<\/p>\n

When that happens, the night sky becomes a type of shared laboratory: researchers gather data, amateur astronomers track changes from night to night and the public gets a rare chance to see an object visibly in motion across the heavens.<\/p>\n

What is it?<\/p>\n

Few places in the U.S. are better suited for that type of communal skywatching than Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO)<\/a>, part of the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab. Perched on a Sonoran Desert mountaintop on the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona, Kitt Peak is home to a dense concentration of telescopes and a long legacy of opening the universe<\/a> to scientists and the public alike.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

That community recently came together<\/a> to observe Comet C\/2023 A3 <\/a>(Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) as it passed through the night sky. Near the 3-foot (0.9 meter) SARA telescope, stargazers used binoculars<\/a> and telescopes<\/a> to glimpse the icy traveler.<\/p>\n

Where is it?<\/p>\n

This image was captured at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.<\/p>\n

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Skywatchers peer upward to watch Comet C\/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) during sunset. (Image credit: PNO\/NOIRLab\/NSF\/AURA\/R. Sparks)Why is it amazing?<\/p>\n

Comet C\/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) has been one of the more widely followed celestial visitors of recent years. The comet, which was discovered in 2023, is believed to have originated in the distant Oort Cloud<\/a>. It became a major target for observers as it approached the inner solar system, making its closest pass by the sun<\/a> in late September 2024 and a relatively close pass to Earth in October 2024.<\/a><\/p>\n

Even when comets don’t behave exactly as predicted \u2014 their brightness and tail structure can change quickly \u2014 the unpredictability is part of the draw. Each clear night offers a slightly different object to study and a slightly different view to remember.<\/p>\n

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!<\/p>\n

Want to learn more?<\/p>\n

You can learn more about stargazing<\/a> and comets.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For eager skywatchers, comets offer a rare opportunity to observe some of our solar system’s most dynamic objects.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-264483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}