Comet C / 2022 E3 (ZTF) achieved wide fame at the beginning of the year 2023 when it approached the sun and then the Earth made its bright green glow visible in the sky of our planet.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL), the comet has orbited 50,000 years from the sun, or at least it has been. C/2022 E3’s close approach (ZTF) to the inner solar system may have altered its orbit enough to confirm that it is now on a one-way trip out of the solar system.
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“For comets with orbits that resemble a very flat circle, which go beyond the planets of the solar system, it is easy for their orbits to become perturbed,” Geza Geok, a scientist at the Adler Planetarium, said in a statement. This may have the effect of causing them to fly out of the solar system entirely. This means that every time a comet with an orbit like this dives into the inner solar system to visit Earth and the sun, this close approach may be the last.
According to the Adler Observatory, this may be the case with C/2022 E3 (ZTF). In the inner part of its last orbit, the comet was in a closed elliptical orbit for 50,000 years. On this inside visit, the gravity of one of the planets it passed through, possibly Jupiter, changed orbit C/2022 E3 (ZTF).
As a result of this push, the outer stage of this journey, which C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is currently experiencing, may not only see it go outside the inner solar system, but it may be ejected out of our planetary system entirely.
This means that C/2022 E3 (ZTF), which last passed close to Earth 50,000 years ago during the last ice age, or “last ice age,” may never return.
Alternatively, this planetary perturbation may have put the comet into a broader, flatter orbit that would last a million years or more.
It is worth noting that the comet is called C / 2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which it first observed during its pass by Jupiter in March last year.
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At first, astronomers suspected it was an asteroid, and realized C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was a comet when it began to brighten as it approached the sun.
This brightness of comets occurs when they approach the sun and are heated by solar radiation. This converts the material on its surface from solid ice to gas.
Comet C / 2022 E3 (ZTF) came closest to the Sun (perihelion), on January 12, when it passed within 100 million miles (160 million kilometers) of our star. Then it headed for Earth, approaching our planet (perihelion), on February 1.
At perihelion, it was about 26 million miles (42 million kilometers) from Earth, or about 28% of the distance between Earth and the sun.
Time will tell if this is C/2022 E3’s final approach to perihelion and Earth.