A green comet is approaching Earth for the first time in 50,000 years.
The dirty snow globe last visited us in Neanderthal times, according to NASA. It will come within 42 million kilometers (26 million miles) on Wednesday before walking away again not to return, probably, for millions of years.
THE PATH OF THE GREEN COMET LIVE:
MIRA: The asteroid the size of a bus that will pass just 3,600 km from Earth
Discovered less than a year ago, the harmless green comet is visible in the northern night sky with binoculars or small telescopesand possibly with the naked eye in the darkest corners of the northern hemisphere. It will get brighter as it gets closer and higher over the horizon until the end of January.. The best hours to see it will be shortly before dawn. By February 10 it will be close to Mars, a good indication.
Southern hemisphere astronomy buffs will have to wait until next month to catch a glimpse of it.
While many comets have graced the sky in the past year, “this one seems to be a bit bigger and therefore a little brighter and gets a little closer to the orbit of the Tierrasaid NASA comet and asteroid guru Paul Chodas.
The green tint comes from carbon in the gas cloud surrounding the core. The comet was discovered in March of last year by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide-field camera at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. His official name is C/2022 E3 (ZTF).
It will pass between the orbits of Earth and Mars on Wednesday at a relative speed of 207,000 km/hour (128,500 mph). Its core is estimated to be 1,600 meters (one mile) in diameter and its tails extend millions of kilometers (miles).
It’s not projected to be as bright as the Neowise of 2020 or the Hale Bopp and Hyakutake of the mid to late 1990s.
But “it will be bright by virtue of its close passage to Earth … allowing scientists to do more experiments and people to see a beautiful comet,” Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii, said in an email.