Stargazers will get the chance of a lifetime on Saturday: the chance to view a newly discovered comet with the naked eye.

The visitor — an ancient dirty snowball from the Oort cloud — was discovered last year by astronomers in China and South Africa as it approached the inner solar system, NASA said in a news release. And this is really your only chance to see it; NASA said the comet, named C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, is not expected to come within viewing distance for 80,000 years.

And what, you ask, is the Oort Cloud? Scientists describe it as a giant spherical shell around our solar system, made of icy, comet-like objects.

NASA officials said the comet made its closest pass by the sun on September 27 and is on track to come within about 45 million miles (70 million kilometers) of Earth on Saturday. Given its orbit around the Earth, this comet would have last been seen in the sky about 80,000 years ago, during the time of the Neanderthals.

The comet will look like a bright fireball with a long, extended tail, said Bill Cooke, chief of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, KABC-TV reported.

The exact intensity of Tsuchinshan-ATLAS’ brightness is difficult to predict.

Unlike a meteor that appears to fly across the sky, Cooke told KABC, C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will appear to hang in space and slowly change position from night to night until it disappears from view in early November .

To view the comet, NASA officials recommended people choose a dark vantage point away from light pollution about 45 minutes after sunset. Binoculars will improve your view of the comet, but you should be able to see it without them.

To locate C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, look southwest and look about 10 degrees above the horizon to find the constellations Sagittarius and Scorpio. The comet should be visible between them. Additionally, mobile apps like SkySafari 7 and Night Sky allow users to locate celestial objects by simply pointing their phone at the sky.