Over the past couple of days, the comet has swung past the Sun, and survived its close encounter intact. The time has come for it to emerge to our evening skies.

A sun-skirting snowball

Comets that get particularly close to the Sun can become spectacular. This is what happened with comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught), which put on an incredible show for observers in the Southern Hemisphere in early 2007.

Comet C/2024 G3 (Atlas) putting on a show as it passes through the field of view of NASA’s SOHO spacecraft’s LASCO/C3 camera. Source: The Conversation

For that reason, astronomers often get excited when a new comet is found that will pass particularly close to the Sun. However, comets are also notoriously fragile and friable. Many small comets on Sun-skirting orbits simply fall apart in a puff of dust and disappointment.

Now the time has come — as I write this, the comet has passed its closest approach to the Sun intact. It has already put on an incredible show as the third brightest comet ever observed by NASA’s space-based solar observatory SOHO, and even been imaged by keen astrophotographers in broad daylight. Over the coming days, it will move into the evening sky as it moves away from the Sun.

A bright comet, low in the west after sunset

Comet C/2024 G3 (Atlas) will begin to appear in the evening sky, low to the west-southwest. For observers in the Northern Hemisphere, it will remain lost in the Sun’s glare. But for those south of the equator, it has the potential to be easily visible for the next few evenings, as the sky darkens after the Sun sets.

What does that mean? If you want to get the best possible view, you need to seize your chance in the next few days. Each evening, the comet will set later, and be farther from the Sun in the sky. But it will also be fainter from one night to the next.

So when, and where, should I look?

Note the position of the comet in these videos is just the location of the comet’s head. The tail will rise upwards from the comet into the sky, leaning a bit to the right. The videos also don’t give a real feel for how bright the comet will be — you’ll just have to go out and see.

The time-lapse video I shot, below, shows that comet rising in the morning sky in early October 2023. You can see how the comet gets easier to see the darker the sky becomes. For the new comet C/2024 G3 (Atlas), imagine the video running backwards, with the comet setting as the sky becomes darker, to get a feel for how the comet might look.

Jonti Horner is a professor astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland.