This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan–ATLAS and considered “the comet of the century,” will appear in all its splendor in our sky during September and October 2024. Due to its characteristics, astronomers believe it will be exceptionally bright, similar to Halley’s comet in 1986 or NEOWISE in 2020.
Comets like C/2023 A3 are balls of frozen gases, rocks, and dust that orbit the sun. They are often spectacular because of two physical phenomena that occur during their journey.
The first is the tail, which stretches out from the nucleus of the comet as it gets closer to the