Rare comet will be visible to the naked eye in California on Saturday

Stargazers will have the opportunity of a lifetime on Saturday: the chance to view a newly discovered comet with the naked eye.

The visitor – an ancient dirty snowball from the Oort cloud – was discovered last year by astronomers in China and South Africa as it approached the inner solar system, NASA said in a news release. And this is really your only chance to see it; NASA said the comet, called C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, is not expected to come back into view for another 80,000 years.

And what, you ask, is the Oort cloud? Scientists describe it as a giant spherical shell around our solar system made up of icy, comet-like objects.

NASA officials said the comet completed its next flyby of the sun on Sept. 27 and was on track to come within about 44 million miles of Earth on Saturday. Based on its orbit, this comet was last seen in the sky around 80,000 years ago, during the time of the Neanderthals.

The comet will look like a bright fireball with a long, elongated tail, said Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, KABC-TV reported.

The exact intensity of Tsuchinshan ATLAS brightness is difficult to predict.

Unlike a meteor that appears to speed across the sky, Cooke told KABC, C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will appear to hang in space, slowly changing position from night to night until it disappears from view in early November.

To view the comet, NASA officials recommended choosing a dark vantage point away from light pollution about 45 minutes after sunset. Binoculars will improve your view of the comet, but you should be able to see it without binoculars.

To locate C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, look southwest and look about 10 degrees above the horizon to find the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpius. The comet should be visible between them. Additionally, mobile apps like SkySafari 7 and Night Sky allow users to locate celestial objects simply by pointing their phone at the sky.