Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is About To Vanish From View

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Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is about to vanish from view. Earth and this interstellar interloper will be on opposite sides of the Sun for a little while. The glare of our star will be blocking the object from view in the coming days, until the two celestial bodies appear too close in the sky for the dim comet to be visible.

The comet is currently several degrees away from the Sun, setting about an hour after our Sun, making it the "best" time to see it. But you need to have a very good instrument, because the comet is really dim; it's a smallish speck currently around the orbit of Mars. Soon, the apparent distance between comet 3I/ATLAS and the Sun will become smaller and smaller, culminating in their closest distance around late October.

The interstellar comet is not getting anywhere near the Sun, however, at least compared to other comets. Its perihelion, the closest approach to our star, is happening on October 29; at this point, comet 3I/ATLAS will be 202 million kilometers (126 million miles) away from the Sun. This means that Earth’s going to miss the moment when the comet will be at its most active, which is a bit unfortunate.

https://www.iflscience.com/interstellar-comet-3iatlas-is-about-to-vanish-from-view-and-wont-be-back-until-later-this-year-80982