Now is the time to catch Comet A3-Tsuchinshan-ATLAS at dawn. The window is now open. If skies are clear, set your alarm heading into this weekend to see Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS at dawn. We’re already seeing great views of the comet this week from southern observers and astronauts aboard the International Space Station. The visibility window is now even creeping up to the southern tier latitudes of the contiguous United States (CONUS). If fortune favors us, the comet could hit an easy naked eye magnitude +2 by next week, and forward scattering could even boost this into negative magnitudes… the rare term ‘daytime comet’ is even getting kicked around a bit in cometwatching circles. But the span to see this comet will be brief indeed. For most northern hemisphere observers, the comet will be a bashful one, never reaching much more than 10 degrees above the eastern horizon about 45 minutes before sunrise on the week centered around September 29th. Exposures of Comet A3 against the brightening dawn. Credit: Chris Schur The Story of Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Thus Far We wrote about prospects for this comet for Universe Today previously just last month. China’s Tsuchinshan (Purple Mountain) observatory and the automated ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial impact Last Alert System) survey discovered the comet on January 9th, 2023. I’ve seen the name abbreviated to simply ‘Comet A3’ or ‘Comet T-ATLAS’ in discussions on keystroke-conservative social media. Likely a first-time visitor to the inner solar system from the distant Oort Cloud, the comet is on an orbit measured in millions of years. This may also be the one and only appearance of the comet in the inner solar system. That’s a good thing, in terms of dynamics and activity, as the comet may have never experienced the heat of the inner solar system in the past. The comet could well head towards permanent ejection from the solar system after perihelion. Key dates coming right up include when the comet reaches perihelion this coming Friday on September 27th at 0.391 Astronomical Units (AU, 36.4 million miles or 58.6 million kilometers) from the Sun, just interior to Mercury’s aphelion point. The comet then makes its closest Earth approach on October 12th, at 0.556 AU distant. Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will become more difficult to catch after October 7th, as it heads in to the Solar Heliospheric Observatory’s (SOHO) LASCO C3 field of view and approaches less than 15 degrees elongation from the Sun. The comet makes a second evening reappearance mid-month, which will most likely be less than favorable as it heads away from us and back out of the inner solar system. We could, however, see something interesting in late October (if the comet survives perihelion) as the tail precedes ahead of the outbound comet. Chris Schur caught the comet from Payson, Arizona (with a narrow 10 minute window!) on the morning of September 23rd. Credit: Chris Schur. How the Comet is Performing Now The comet seemed to be headed towards the long rolls of ‘great comets that weren’t’ this past summer, as it stalled at +10th magnitude. Now, the trend seems to have shifted, as the comet is over-performing versus expectations. As of writing this, the comet stands at +3rd magnitude and is rapidly brightening. We’re already seeing signs of two tails (one dust and one ion) forming in this week’s images of the comet. Forward scattering may help boost the visibility of the comet next week, as all those dust particles reach a maximum illumination angle as seen from our Earthly vantage point in early October. The comet’s orbit passes edge-on from our vantage point on October 14th. The comet will seem to hang stationary low in the dawn next week, as it loops towards us, and then crosses between the Earth and the Sun. Comet T-ATLAS as imaged from Tivoli Farm, Namibia on September 22nd (note the fan of the comet’s second tail off to the left). Credit: Gerald Rhemann. How to See the Comet The October apparition will be a tricky one for sure. A good strategy is to use binoculars and start sweeping low to the eastern horizon about an hour before local sunrise. The +1st magnitude star Regulus (Alpha Leonis) will make a good ‘guide star’ to find the comet. The star will be about an outstretched hand’s width to the observer’s lower right. The comet pairs with the slim waning crescent Moon on the morning of September 30th, making for a grand photo-op. That same Moon is headed towards an annular solar eclipse on October 2nd. The view on the morning of September 30th. Credit: Starry Night Edu Software. Clouded out? We feel your frustration here in eastern Tennessee, as clouds from approaching hurricane Helene move inland this coming weekend. Astronomer Gianluca Masi will also carry the comet live on the evening of October 9th. Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS from September 24th. Credit: The Virtual Telescope Project. “It (Comet T-ATLAS) survived and so far, it looks brighter than expected.” Astrophotographer Eliot Herman told Universe Today. “I still don’t think it will be amazing when it can be seen when dark enough… I am thinking maybe March 2013 Comet (C/2011 L4) PanSTARRS level – which was visible to the eye and pretty nice with a camera.” We can only hope for a bright comet as depicted by astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth’s painting of the Great Daytime Comet of 1843: Smyth’s painting, at the Greenwich Maritime Museum. Credit: Dave Dickinson. The Comet From the ISS Astronauts aboard the International Space Station already caught the comet from their vantage point in low Earth orbit this week. NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick produced this fine animation: Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is teasing us with the recent memories of two other dawn comets. Remember P1 McNaught in 2006-2007 and W3 Lovejoy in 2011-2012? Both beat the odds, and went on to become fine comets, ahead of expectations. Comet McNaught imaged from Villa Alemana, Chile in January 2007. Credit: Garcia Ruben/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain. As always with comets, a caveat is in order: several factors will conspire against your cometary quest. First: as noted, the comet will appear very low to the horizon. This means it will fight against the thick murk of the atmosphere and the brightening twilight sky. Secondly, comets are intrinsically dark objects, with a low surface brightness or albedo… remember Rosetta’s views of Comet 67P Churumov-Gerasimenko? Lastly, like deep sky objects, all of that precious magnitude gets dispersed over an apparent surface area. This makes a +2 magnitude comet much fainter looking versus a +2nd magnitude star. During F3 NEOWISE’s 2020 apparition, I could juuuust start to convince myself that it was naked eye when it reached around +1st magnitude. Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is finally here ! ???I captured this image this morning at 09:22 UTC from @LCOAstro in Atacama desert in Chile ?? The view was absolutely spectacular ! The clouds were constantly moving just above the horizon, but we got really lucky when the… pic.twitter.com/AoClHkatFr — Yuri Beletsky (@YBeletsky) September 24, 2024 NEOWISE… or Nishimura? We had two recent comets perform very similar to Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. In 2020, Comet F3 NEOWISE became a fine naked eye comet at dawn, wowing early morning observers. On the flip side, 2023’s Comet P1 Nishimura flirted with naked eye brightness, but never really became a general crowd pleaser. Clear skies on your hunt this coming week, to see what’s most likely to be the best comet of 2024. The post Will Comet A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS Shine Brighter Than Expected? appeared first on Universe Today.

The antelopes’ annual migration has been called one of the seven natural wonders of Africa.

Many people have been conditioned to be afraid of geese. They have a reputation for being aggressive and there are no shortage of stories from people who have been chased and bitten by geese while they were seemingly minding their own business. If you've spent time near a lake, chances are you've had an encounter with a goose that was likely less than ideal. This level of perceived and actual aggression would lead most people to believe that the fat bottomed waterfowl naturally hates humans. But do they? Recently a woman who runs the account, The Dog Moms on TikTok, uploaded a video of her seeing what would happen if she pretended to faint in front of her gaggle of geese. The geese reacted in a surprising way.According to Varment Guard Wildlife Services geese will aggressively honk, flap their wings and run after you because they're protective, don't like to share, aren't easily scared and they're used to humans because they see them all the time. "Male geese (ganders) guard the females and the nests while eggs are incubated. Ganders do not take their protective duties lightly. If anyone gets close to their nests, they are not afraid of getting defensive. Ganders will continue to patrol the area and honk, hiss, or get physically violent until the eggs have hatched," the wildlife service says. Canada Goose Birds GIF by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Giphy Since people are used to the seemingly aggressive nature of geese, seeing the woman's gaggle go running to her aid is helping people see them in a different light. One goose who looks like he's straight out of the Mother Goose story, ran through a small patch of watermelons, face plants after tripping over one and still makes it to the woman first. His little fluffy tushy looks like a feather duster, but he was so determined to see if the woman was ok that he didn't seem to care that he tripped. A commenter points out, "of course it was the Toulouse goose first. That's why those are the type of geese in nursery rhymes. Aside from looking like they have a feather duster for a bottom, Toulouse geese are known to be docile and enjoy the company of humans. @thedogmoms Safe to say if anything actually happened to me Fluffy is definitely coming to my rescue no matter how many watermelon try to stop her ?? #mysaviors #petgeese #loyal #geese ♬ I Will Be There - Kchizzy Chances are this type of goose isn't the one doing the aggressive chasing, flapping and biting out in the wild. But the other geese in the video aren't Toulouse geese. They're the typical geese most people are accustom to seeing around bodies of water yet they all went running to the woman to check on her. It almost looked as if they were attempting to devise a plan to help the woman up but were unsure what to do about their lack of arms. The geese honked frantically switching between looking and honking at each other to looking and honking at the woman on the ground. After a few seconds of confused geese chaos, the woman could tell they were genuinely worried and decided to show them that she was okay. birds goose GIF Giphy Commenters couldn't get enough of the geese frenzied geese running to try to save their owner. "That first grey goose said "help is on the way dear," someone laughs.Another person declares, "If you don't go hug the one that looks like a feather duster I'm gonna cry more!""The way that baby tripped over a melon for you! That is pure love right there," someone else writes. Goose Waddle GIF by The Great British Bake Off Giphy "Never knew geese could be so loyal, look at them running to save you," another says."Fluffy loves you the most. Was prepared to break a chicken ankle on a watermelon for you," someone jokes while someone else compared the compassionate goos behavior to their cat's behavior, "for contrast, my cat tripped me on a flight of stairs while I was moving house, and while I was semi knocked out and laying face down the stairwell she hopped up on my back and started making biscuits and purring." Maybe the cat was just assuming the human was hungry so it made biscuits...let's go with that. Either way, what a sweet gaggle of geese showing the world that geese may not be mean at all, just a little misunderstood.

Ah Gen Z, the age group known for their brutal TikTok roasts (mostly of millennials) and their attitude towards workplace professionalism that’s just a tad, shall we say, more casual than previous generations. While this attitude might be jarring at times, it also can be delightfully refreshing. Just ask the company Oilshore, which recently shared the hilarious “out of office” messages created by its Gen Z employees.Whether they chose a clever, tongue-in-cheek approach, like “On vacation. Hoping to win the lottery and never return,” or something more direct and borderline threatening ala “Do not contact me while I’m on leave or I’ll report you to HR,” these Gen Z workers made their message loud and clear.To no one’s surprise, the responses struck a particularly strong chord with millennials.“They are so bold, I love it. As a millennial I be scared to be off of work,” one wrote. Another added, “I wish I had this direct attitude but my millennial self would never be able to do that.”Yet another praised these workers, saying, “Xennial here thinking Gen Z’s doing all the things I’ve dreamt of doing. Kings and queens changing work culture.” @oilshore Here at Oilshore we value honesty ? #corporatetiktok #genzworker #workhumour #officelife ♬ Spongebob Tomfoolery - Dante9k Remix - David Snell Indeed, while Gen Zers might often get labeled as lazy or entitled, they are inspiring some pretty positive disruption. According to a Stanford Report, this generation prioritizes collaboration, mental health and work-life balance, transparency, and social impact and are demanding to see these types of changes in the workforce. That’s more than evident in these “out of office” messages. Here’s another video with even more fun ones. Feel free to use some of these yourself, if you dare. @oilshore Replying to @Rik O'Smithwick well at least they are being honest ? #workhumour #genzworker #corporatetiktok ♬ Coconut Mall (From "Mario Kart Wii") - Arcade Player "Enjoying life! Will be back when I run out of money!" might be the truest sentence ever written. But wait, there’s more where that came from. These Gen Z workers also have some pretty awesome email sign-offs for when they're finally back in the office. I will be stealing “mean regards” immediately. @oilshore Anything is better than ‘regards’ #genz #genzemployee #workhumour #officehumout #genzoffice ♬ Borderline - Tame Impala In many ways, Gen Zers’ workplace values don’t differ that much from that of their post-Boomer predecessors. But there are other factors at play, like coming of age in the wake of a historic pandemic and the worldwide threat of climate change, as well as unprecedented digital connectivity that make all these events more visible, which undoubtedly influence their relentlessness in getting these needs met.And thank goodness for that relentlessness, because it makes work a better place to be—in more ways than one.Follow @oilshore on TikTok for even more funny workplace-related content.This article originally appeared on 5.2.24

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He called it a "nadir". The post The one record David Bowie wanted to delete from history: “It was such an awful album” first appeared on Far Out Magazine.

It's National "One-Hit Wonder Day," do you remember these songs?