An ice comet will fly past Earth in a few weeks – for the first time in 50,000 years.
Even with the naked eye, it is said to be visible in the night sky with its green tail.
According to NASA, the comet comes from the mysterious Oort Cloud.
According to NASA, a green comet will pass by Earth for the first time since the Stone Age. It could be visible in the sky in late January and early February.
Astronomers discovered the ice comet, designated C/2022 E3 (ZTF), in March 2022. They had never seen it before because it takes an incredibly long time to orbit the sun, completing an orbit lasting tens of thousands of years . When this comet was last in our neighborhood, modern astronomy—and human civilization—didn’t exist.
The comet is expected to be about 26 million miles from Earth on February 2nd. According to the astronomers, that would be the closest proximity to Earth in 50,000 years. At that time people were in the Neolithic period. At that time people probably left Africa and settled in Asia and Europe. Neanderthals still lived on earth. The planet was in the middle of an ice age.
The icy cosmic visitor will pass our planet at a distance nearly 109 times the Moon’s average distance, but the comet shines so brightly it could still be seen in the night sky.
“Comets are notoriously unpredictable, but if this comet continues its current trend in brightness, it will be easy to spot with binoculars and there is a good chance it will become visible to the unaided eye under dark skies,” NASA wrote in an update on December 29th.
Where the comet will be seen
In the northern hemisphere, the green comet should be visible just before sunrise in late January. At first it can only be seen with a telescope, but as it nears Earth, NASA expects it to be seen with binoculars as well.
“The comet has brightened significantly and is now passing over the northern constellation Corona Borealis in the morning sky,” NASA said in a press release. At this point it was still too weak to be seen with a telescope.
A fully eclipsed new moon on January 21 could make for ideal dark skies to see the comet.
In the southern hemisphere, the green cosmic snowball will be visible in early February. The comet has a greenish dust tail and a long, faint ion tail, according to NASA.
Many comets glow green. Researchers link this to a reactive molecule called dicarbon, which emits green light when it breaks down in sunlight. Dicarbon is widespread in comets but is not normally found in their tails. That’s why the so-called coma — the haze surrounding the ball of frozen gas, dust, and rock at the center of a comet — glows green while the tail stays white.
Experts told USA Today that the comet most likely originated in the Oort Cloud, the farthest region of the solar system described by NASA as a large, thick-walled bubble of icy space debris the size of a mountain and sometimes larger.
Last chance to see the comet
“We don’t yet have an estimate of how far it will travel from Earth — estimates vary — but if it does return, it won’t be for another 50,000 years,” Jessica Lee, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, told Newsweek.
“Some predictions suggest that this comet’s orbit is so eccentric that it’s out of orbit – so it won’t come back at all and just keep going,” she added.