2026/07/31 by Goldy Ahuja, Shashikiran Ganesh, Aravind Krishnakumar +3
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.EP
9 pages, 1 figure, 1 table, to be published in the Proceedings of the 4th BINA Workshop: Moving forward with the Indo-Belgian Cooperation in Astronomy (accepted for publication in Bulletin de la Société Royale des Sciences de Liège (2026))
arxiv created 2026/08/03 · arxiv updated 2026/08/04
Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is a non-periodic dynamically new Oort cloud comet that was discovered independently by Purple Mountain Observatory in China and Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescopes in South Africa. The comet passed perihelion at a distance of 0.39 AU on 27 September 2024. It was visible to the naked eye (the brightest since the comet C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp)) and was dubbed the great comet of 2024. In this work, we investigate the nature of this comet, which is moving in a hyperbolic orbit (e > 1), by analysing its composition using various observational techniques and tracing its orbital evolution through high-precision N-body simulations.