His last visit was 50,000 years ago: the comet “C/2022 E3 (ZTF)“, coming from the outer reaches of the solar system and discovered recently, will pass close to the Sun this week and could be visible to the naked eye at the end of January.
The small, rocky, icy body, estimated to be about 1 km in diameter, was discovered in March 2022 by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) astronomical sky survey program which operates the Samuel-Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory, in California.
We can have a good surprise and see an object twice as bright as expected
Detected as it passed through Jupiter’s orbit, the comet is currently heading towards the Sun and will reach its perihelion – that is to say its closest point to the Sun – on January 12, according to the calculations of astronomers.
The celestial object will then be “10% further“from the Sun than is the Earth (about 150 million km), Nicolas Biver, of the Paris-PSL Observatory, told AFP.