Aoraki said the best chance of seeing the comet would be to leave the city due to light pollution.

“In Auckland, if you go out to places like Muriwai and Piha, that will give you the best shot.”

He said the prime time to view the comet would be during a 45-minute to hour window just after sunset.

“It’s a fairly bright comet. We don’t often get bright naked-eye visibility comets.

“They’re very rare and unpredictable. But this has been the most promising one in several years.”

He estimated Comet C/2023 A3 was 85 million kilometres away and only came along once in a human lifetime.

“It’s not like Halley’s Comet that goes around the sun in 80 years,” he said.

“It has a very long orbit so it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to see this comet.”

“It’s quite rare to see a naked-eye comet so I implore people to go and see it.”

This potential sighting comes a week after Aurora Australis lit up the skies in blazing purple, blue and pink for Southland and Otago residents.

People were given a rare glimpse into the mechanics of the sun and its effects on our planet after the solar flares caused the colourful display last week.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation and energy blasted from the sun’s surface when built-up magnetic energy is suddenly released.

They often happen near sunspots, where the Sun’s magnetic fields are particularly strong.

Particularly when such flares are accompanied by coronal mass ejections, they can release massive clouds of charged particles, or plasma, that travel through space and interact with Earth’s magnetic field.

This activity can lead to geomagnetic storms, which, in turn, can trigger dazzling auroras visible in our night skies.

David Williams is an Auckland-based multimedia journalist who joined the Herald in 2023. He covers breaking news and general topics.

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