Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF (Photo: NASA/Dan Bartlett)
Comet C/2022 E3, which has not been seen here for tens of thousands of years, will reach a safe distance from us on February 1 and will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere.
This is the first visit of the star near the Earth since the Stone Age (a prolonged era of millions of years, which ended about 4,000 years ago with the beginning of the Bronze Age) and has not been seen here for 50,000 years.
It may or may not be possible to observe the star without proper equipment, and when the comet passes us it will appear as a bright spot that may scatter its light and dust around it.
Also,
if the expected winter weather does not disrupt the plans
, it is recommended to go to a place as dark as possible, without "light pollution", and look towards the North Star.
However, try not to miss him, because he will not come to visit again for another thousand years, and some estimate that according to his route, this will be his only visit near us.
C/2022 E3 reached its closest point to the Sun this week, on January 12, and will reach its closest point to Earth on February 1, a distance of 42 million kilometers from us.
According to NASA, the best time to view the comet is early in the morning. One space photographer used a spectacular image of the greenish C/2022 E3 for his New Year's greeting and noted that the comet's nucleus (estimated to be only about 4.5 km) can be seen surrounded by a greenish halo, And the trail of brown dust it trails behind - everything was photographed with the help of dedicated space photography equipment.
C/2022 E3 as its name indicates, is a relatively new discovery, barely a year old.
It was discovered on March 2, 2022 by astronomers Frank Massey and Bryce Bolin, at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California.
It was initially classified as an asteroid due to its low luminosity.
At the time of its discovery C/2022 E3 was 643 million kilometers from the Sun, in the inner orbit of Jupiter.
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