This comet, named ATLAS after the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System that discovered it, reached an extraordinary brightness. It shone as brightly as Venus, making it visible to the naked eye first in the northern hemisphere until mid January then in the south afterwards.

Comet G3 ATLAS is set to shine at its brightest this week, potentially outshining Venus and Jupiter. G3 ATLASs orbit is so big that it takes roughly 160,000 year to go around the Sun. As it approaches perihelion on January 13,

G3 (ATLAS) did it! It survived its perilous perihelion, getting ten times closer to the Sun than Earth does. This comet is a sungrazer comet, and the encounter made it bright – so bright that even at a considerable distance,