COMET WITH A GREENISH AURA THAT APPEARS ONCE EVERY 50,000 YEARS VISIBLE FROM EARTH

The Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) that was discovered by astronomers at the Zwicky Transient Facility.

Sat 07 January 2023:

For the first time in 50,000 years, a comet will pass by Earth and the Sun in the next weeks, and it may be visible to the naked eye.

On February 1, the comet is predicted to pass closest to Earth. If the sky is too illuminated by city lights or the moon, it will be easy to see the comet with a good pair of binoculars or even with the naked eye,

Because a fuller Moon may make spotting it difficult, the new Moon on January 21-22 provides a good opportunity for stargazers, according to Nicolas Biver, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory.

The comet was named C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, which discovered it passing Jupiter in March of last year.

According to Biver, the comet is made of ice and dust and has a greenish aura.

It is estimated to be about a kilometer in diameter. That makes it much smaller than NEOWISE, the most recent comet visible with the naked eye, which passed Earth in March 2020, and Hale-Bopp, which passed by in 1997 with a diameter of about 60 kilometers (37 miles).

But the latest visit will come closer to Earth, which “may make up for the fact that it is not very big”, Biver said.

“We could also get a nice surprise and the object could be twice as bright as expected,” he added.

The Oort Cloud, a theoretically enormous sphere around the solar system that is home to enigmatic frozen particles, is thought to have produced the comet.

The last time the comet passed Earth was during the Upper Paleolithic period, when Neanderthals still roamed Earth.

The Oort Cloud, a theoretically enormous sphere around the solar system that is home to enigmatic frozen particles, is thought to have produced the comet.

According to Biver, it’s possible that the comet will be “permanently ejected from the solar system” following this encounter.

The James Webb Space Telescope will be one of those paying careful attention. The astronomer claimed that instead of taking pictures, it will instead analyze the composition of the comet.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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