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I have spent many years looking for a comet from my home observatory. While I have found quite a few doing survey work for Catalina Sky Survey, nailing that "home" comet was still a high priority item for me. I finally found one on Sept. 30, 2024. This was a marginally bright comet moving through the Milky Way that I just beat ATLAS to. After running precovery searches in CSS data, it quickly became clear that this comet had recently gone from undetectable to an outburst within a short period of time, days or a week.

I see this idea come up a lot on social media, even from rational people. The idea that the US government or world governments would try to cover up an imminent impact of a large asteroid or comet. As I work in this business I thought it would be fun to share some information about how this process works and why it would be impossible to keep it secret. 

History: 

Yeah baby, it is that time again. An eclipse just happened! They are amazing astronomical events to witness without a doubt and I highly encourage people to go view them and take snaps! It also brings out a lot of the professional photographers who wish to show off their amazing skills. Photoshop skills that is. Of course, they definitely let you know just how fake the images are when they describe the image as a "composite image" for their fans.