It won’t be an aurora encore for Philly this weekend, but a rare comet will be visible

It’s not clear when the region will be gifted with another display of the northern lights, but the cosmos is offering us a once-in-an-80,000-year consolation prize.

Starting after sunset Saturday, comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, a cosmic ice ball, will be visible near the western horizon, and again each night for about the next two weeks, clouds and light pollution permitting.

And contrary to the Phillies’ bats during the playoffs, professional sky-watchers say the comet will show up and it should be “at least as bright as Jupiter,” the giant of the solar system, said Derrick Pitts, the Franklin Institute astronomer. Of course, the darker the sky, the better.

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Depending on the robustness of its impressive tail, the comet should be visible to the naked eye.

On its immense journey, the comet “grew an amazingly long tail,” said Bryan Brasher, project manager with the Space Weather Prediction Center. “So the hope is that the comet will hold together and maintain a healthy tail.”

Pitts recommends using binoculars — they don’t have to be anything special — and avoiding telescopes unless you are comfortable using them.

If you can’t find the comet in 15 minutes, take a break and come back later. “Don’t frustrate yourself,” he said.

And if you are using binoculars, don’t worry about adjusting your eyes to the darkness.

Each night, the comet will be appearing a little higher on the western horizon, and NASA says the best viewing nights should be from Monday through Oct. 24.

But while the comet will be climbing ever higher, it will be moving farther away and gradually losing brightness, said Pitts. By the end of the month, it may go the way of the Phillies, and don’t expect to see it again until around year 82224.

It’s basically one mighty hard ice ball. In NASA’s words, comets “are frozen leftovers from the formation of the solar system composed of dust, rock, and ices.”

While C/2023 A3 doesn’t have quite the showmanship of the aurora, it does have an impressive resume.

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Discovered in 2023 by Chinese astronomers, the comet has been wandering the universe and hasn’t been this close to earth in 80,000 years, a bit before humans became really diligent about keeping records.

It made its closes recent approach to our sun in late September, and now is only about 44 million miles from us.

Comets are frequent visitors in our solar system, but NASA notes that many of them never make it if they pass too close to the sun. A famous case was the much ballyhooed Comet Kohoutek, which reached the inner solar system in 1973, broke up while passing too close to the sun.

This one has survived.

It’s almost certainly not going to happen this weekend, but the conditions on the sun that produced them are likely to persist, the experts say.

The rare sky show was apparent in Alaska and all 48 of the contiguous United States, according to EarthSky.org — the result of a powerful geomagnetic storm.

Geomagnetic storms are ignited by “sunspots” — massive disturbances that eject billions of tons of solar material toward earth.

Sunspot activity varies in 11-year cycles, and scientists at the Space Weather Prediction Center say that this cycle, which began in 2019, is at or near its peak

Aurora encores are possible in the near future, said Bennett A. Maruca, a physics and astronomy professor at the University of Delaware.

“The sun remains very active — we’re only about halfway through solar maximum — so there are plenty more opportunities for additional storms,” he said.