New Zealanders will have a chance to spot a comet with the naked eye that hasn’t been seen in our skies for 80,000 years.<\/p>\n
Comet C\/2023 A3 is expected to be visible to the naked eye in the western skies of the country from Tuesday until later in the week.<\/p>\n
Stardome astronomer Josh Aoraki told the Herald that the best place to see the comet would be anywhere that has a clear unobstructed view of the western horizon.<\/p>\n
“You’re going to see a really bright star which is Venus, and if you look below that to the right, you might see this little fuzzy patch in the sky. That’s the comet.”<\/p>\n
The Stardome astronomer said the comet was likely to have a tail extending from the back.<\/p>\n
Aoraki said the best chance of seeing the comet would be to leave the city due to light pollution.<\/p>\n
“In Auckland, if you go out to places like Muriwai and Piha, that will give you the best shot.”<\/p>\n
He said the prime time to view the comet would be during a 45-minute to hour window just after sunset.<\/p>\n
“It’s a fairly bright comet. We don’t often get bright naked-eye visibility comets.<\/p>\n
“They’re very rare and unpredictable. But this has been the most promising one in several years.”<\/p>\n
He estimated Comet C\/2023 A3 was 85 million kilometres away and only came along once in a human lifetime.<\/p>\n
“It’s not like Halley’s Comet that goes around the sun in 80 years,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It has a very long orbit so it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see this comet.<\/p>\n
“It’s quite rare to see a naked-eye comet so I implore people to go and see it.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Zealanders will have a chance to spot a comet with the naked eye that hasn’t been seen in our skies for 80,000 years. Comet C\/2023 A3 is expected to be visible to the naked eye in the western skies of the country from Tuesday until later in the week. Stardome astronomer Josh Aoraki told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11672,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11670\/revisions\/11672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}