Newly confirmed comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) = A10SVYR will pass only 3 degrees from the Sun as seen from Earth on 2024 October 9-10 at an extremely high phase angle of 173 degrees. If the comet is large/bright enough to survive its 0.39 au perihelion passage, the extreme forward scattering will likely boost the dust to at least 0th magnitude to be brightly seen by at least SOHO's LASCO C3 coronagraph (along with STEREO-A's HI1, and maybe the future GOES-U/19's CCOR-1) and quite possibly even in broad daylight from the ground if it turns out to be a bit brighter. C/2010 X1 (Elenin) was the last (non-SOHO/STEREO-found) long-period comet to reach such high phase angles, but it actually disintegrated first and left nothing to be seen there, an alternate fate that also remains quite possible for C/2023 A3 with the limited information available so far.

Here's my experimental spot on the Fediverse. I ponder comets, asteroids, and various extrapolations of such things. Currently a planetary science Ph.D. student at Caltech.
https://near.earth/qz
Joined Dec, 2022
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