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Hi all,

I have not seen much discussion about C/2024 G3 of late. While I personally doubt that it will survive to perihelion, I still think that its behavior as it approaches perihelion will be noteworthy. The comet has already reached magnitude 6 after all! It's currently the brightest comet in the sky.

I've just imaged it from X09 this morning. Attached is a single 30-second R-filter exposure at different brightness settings to show different details of the comet. The nucleus seems well-condensed and healthy at r=0.65 AU, but it has yet to reach its Bortle distance so this isn't much surprise.

Whatever happens will develop quickly, as by this time next week the comet will be at r=0.44, then r=0.19 the week after that. Its Bortle distance, for reference, is about 0.33 AU - which is not a hard predictor of disintegration distance but a very vague guideline.

The comet (or possibly its debris) will enter LASCO C3's field of view on Jan 11th at about r=0.14.

~Sam

Hi Sam, all,

Not surprising there has not been that much discussion about C/2024 G3 recently.
A study by Sekanina in 2019 has clearly demonstrated that the Bortle limit has only a prognostic value for dynamically new comets, in particular those that have q < 0.6 AU, are intrinsically faint and poor in dust. And that old comets almost always survive.
Well, this is a dynamically old comet (see NK 5328), it appears fairly dusty in the images you have attached (and others) and is not that faint intrinsically.
So I don't see it to be in danger, despite its small perihelion distance.
Au contraire, it may become quite a nice view after perihelion for southern hemisphere observers, maybe comparable to C/2023 A3 at its best.

Best regards,
Reinder