C/2024 S1 (ATLAS)

C/2024 S1 (ATLAS)

The comet on 28 September 2024
Discovery
Discovered by	Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System-HKO (ATLAS)
Discovery date	27 September 2024
Orbital characteristics
Epoch	29 September 2024
Observation arc	4 days
Perihelion	0.0082 AU
Eccentricity	1.00014
Inclination	141.8°
Longitude of ascending node	346.5°
Argument of periapsis	68.3°
Next perihelion	28 October 2024
Earth MOID	0.51 AU
Comet total magnitude (M1)	15.1

C/2024 S1 (ATLAS) (previously had a temporary designation A11bP7I) is a sungrazing comet that was discovered by ATLAS-HKO in Hawaii on 27 September 2024. The comet will pass its perihelion on 28 October 2024, at a distance of about 0.008 AU (1.2 million km; 0.74 million mi) from the barycenter of the Solar System. The comet has a similar orbit with the Kreutz sungrazers, which was created by the fragmentation of a larger comet. After perihelion it could become visible to the naked eye, and maybe look like C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy), another Kreutz sungrazer.

The comet was discovered during the ATLAS survey, using a 0.5-m reflector telescope located at Haleakala, Hawaii. The comet then was estimated to have an apparent magnitude of 15.3 and featured a coma about half arcminute across. Further observations reported the coma was as large as three arcminutes across and a tail up to 156 arcseconds long. The apparent magnitude was estimated to be as high as 12.6 the next few days.

External links

• C/2024 S1 at the JPL Small-Body Database