Comet approaches closest point to Earth and hovers over Bay Area sky

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C/2023 A3 via Santa Rosa

SANTA ROSA, California. – Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), the comet some are calling the “Comet of the Century,” was captured hovering over Santa Rosa by KTVU photographer Jaden Schaul.

On Monday, just before 8 p.m., the highly anticipated comet, which reached its closest point to Earth, treated Bay Area viewers to a spectacle.

C/2023 A3 was discovered on January 9, 2023 at an observatory in China. According to Space.com, it was initially thought to be an asteroid.

According to National Geographic, it will be another 80,000 years before this comet is seen again.

C/2023 A3 via Santa Rosa. Photo by Jaden Schaul.

A KTVU viewer also caught the phenomenon not once, but twice. Darcie Kent first saw the comet in South Lake Tahoe. She said she actually cried when she saw it for the first time. Then the next day, after searching online for information about the comet, she saw it again from her vantage point in the Livermore Valley. Kent said this was observed while workers were harvesting the Malbec grape crop.

What an amazing feat to not only see it twice in two places, but also to have it documented.

Others posted on social media that they had seen the comet in places like Las Vegas, Boulder and Tuscon.

In late September, the comet put on a spectacle as it danced with the Northern Lights. A videographer posted this revealing time-lapse of the comet next to the Golden Gate Bridge on September 27th.

NASA researchers predicted at the time that if the comet survived, it would reappear around October 12th. That prediction came true on Monday.

While this ancient comet flirts dangerously with the sun, it was about 44 million miles from Earth when it was captured in its “Image of the Day” on September 28, according to NASA. The photo was taken from the International Space Station orbiting 272 miles over the South Pacific, southeast of New Zealand, just before sunrise.

The amount of gas and dust the comet emits determines how bright it appears in the sky. The comet's visibility is best over the western horizon after sunset, although there's a good chance you'll have missed this opportunity as visibility fades.

If you want to learn more about these “cosmic snowballs,” read NASA’s explainer here.

KTVU's Jaden Schaul and Roberta Gonzales contributed to this report.