The “Comet of the Century” reaches its most visible point, coinciding with the “rain” of the northern lights.

Starting this Saturday, October 12th, it will be the best time to watch comet Tzuchinshan-ATLASknown as the “comet of the century” as it will make its closest approach to Earth. The phenomenon coincides with a period of intense solar activity that allowed us to see the northern lights from several locations on the Iberian Peninsula on Thursday evening and which could return, albeit with less intensity, over the next few days.

Although it is impossible to see a comet and auroras at the same time in our latitudes, since they occur hours apart, since the first will be visible in the west and the second in the north, in remote places there is a remote possibility of beholding both spectacles in the sky on the same night .

Long-tailed comet

The comet can be observed with the naked eye from high, clear places on the horizon, just after sunset, looking west. To get a better look at it, it is recommended to move away from the light pollution of cities and go to places located on a hill and where the horizon is clear.

“It is a very good comet to observe because it has a tail of 21 degrees, which is equivalent to 42 full moons coming one after the other,” amateur astronomer Paco Bellido explains to elDiario.es. “It will be visible in the next few days, and the duration of the phenomenon depends on how much its brightness decreases,” explains scientist and popularizer Nahum M. Chazarra. “It will slowly lose its brightness over the following days, but it is unclear when it will stop being visible as it depends on how much its magnitude drops.”

“This Friday it will be difficult to see because it will be quite low, but on Saturday it will be more or less at the same altitude as Venus, and as time goes on it will be more visible, in the sense that it will be further from the Sun and last longer in the sky,” notes Bellido.

Party in heaven

As for the auroras, it will be difficult to see them at the same time as the comet, warns specialist Fernando Ortuño. “But this is the perfect plan for tonight,” he says. “The comet can be seen at twilight with a tail of 20 degrees, and the northern lights have a good slightly lower forecast, although it cannot be ruled out that they could be seen especially around midnight UTC.”

Early Thursday morning, images of the northern lights were captured in different areas of the northern half of the peninsula, not as bright as last May but impressive. Why have there been so many auroras in mid-latitudes lately? “We are at the peak of solar activity, which means the Sun is at a particularly active stage of its 11-year cycle,” Bellido says. “At our latitudes, auroras are visible low, although we are actually seeing a phenomenon that occurs at higher latitudes, so we should always look north to observe them,” Ortuño adds.

I don’t know if this has ever happened before, but it is certainly not often that two such impressive celestial phenomena are observed simultaneously.

Paco Bellido
— amateur astronomer

The simultaneous presence of auroras and a comet in the night sky is a very rare phenomenon, experts admit. “I don’t know if this has ever happened before, but it’s certainly not often that two such impressive celestial phenomena are observed at the same time,” admits Paco Bellido. The likelihood that we will see auroras again here in Spain is not very high, but it is not impossible given the level of solar activity, he says. “It’s a shame that in many places the forecast shows cloudy skies,” he says.

On the other hand, seeing auroras with the naked eye is significantly more difficult than seeing a comet, and will generally be a more challenging task for those with good night sky cameras. “The fact that we can now observe auroras is due to a bias due to increased exposure power of our instruments, better knowledge of the dynamics of solar physics and its interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field,” he explains. . Ortuño. “But that doesn’t mean taking to the skies on these nights can’t be a great experience.”