West News Wire: 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 unaided eye.
On February 1, the comet is predicted to pass closest to Earth. If the sky is clear of city lights or the moon, it will be simple to see the comet without binoculars or even with them.
According to Nicolas Biver, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory, the new Moon on January 21–22 provides a wonderful opportunity for astronomers as a bigger Moon may make it challenging to see it.
The comet was given the name C/2022 E3 (ZTF) in honor of the Zwicky Transient Facility in California, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March last year.
Biver said the comet is made of ice and dust, and emits a greenish aura.
It is estimated to have a diameter of about a kilometre. That makes it significantly smaller than NEOWISE, the last comet visible with an unaided eye, which passed Earth in March 2020, and Hale-Bopp, which swept by in 1997 with a diameter of about 60 kilometres (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 comet is believed to have come from the Oort Cloud, a theorised vast sphere surrounding the solar system that is home to mysterious icy objects.
The last time the comet passed Earth was during the Upper Paleolithic period, when Neanderthals still roamed Earth.
Biver said there was a possibility that after this visit the comet will be “permanently ejected from the solar system”.
Among those closely watching will be the James Webb Space Telescope. However, it will not take images, instead studying the comet’s composition, the astrophysicist said.
Thomas Prince, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology who works at the Zwicky Transient Facility, told AFP that the comet’s proximity to the Earth made it easier for telescopes to measure its composition “as the Sun boils off its outer layers”.
This “rare visitor” will give “us information about the inhabitants of our solar system well beyond the most distant planets”, he added.
Prince said another opportunity to locate the comet in the sky will come on February 10, when it passes close to Mars.
