Rare Green Comet To Orbit Near Earth Next Month In First Appearance Since Recorded History

A bright green comet, first spotted in March 2022, is set to enter our skies next month for the first time since recorded history.

The comet named C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has a “brighter greenish coma, short broad dust tail, and long faint ion tail stretching across a 2.5-degree wide field-of-view,” NASA said in a statement.

The cosmic visitor is a long-period comet that originates from the Oort Cloud, according to the agency. Oort Cloud is the most distant area of our solar system that’s “like a big, thick-walled bubble made of icy pieces of space debris.”

“Most known long-period comets have been seen only once in recorded history because their orbital periods are so, well, long,” CBS News quoted NASA as saying. “Countless more unknown long-period comets have never been seen by human eyes. Some have orbits so long that the last time they passed through the inner solar system, our species did not yet exist.”

Comet E3 will be the closest to our Sun on Jan. 12 and the closest to planet Earth on Feb. 2.

“We don’t have an estimate for the furthest it will get from the Earth yet — estimates vary — but if it does return it won’t be for at least 50,000 years,” Jessica Lee, an astronomer with the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said, as per the outlet. “…Some predictions suggest that the orbit of this comet is so eccentric it’s no longer in an orbit-so it’s not going to return at all and will just keep going.”

The comet was first discovered on March 2, 2022, by astronomers Bryce Bolin and Frank Masci with the help of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey. Since then, its image has been captured by astronomers at NASA.

“Since then, the new long-period comet has brightened substantially and is now sweeping across the northern constellation Corona Borealis in predawn skies. It’s still too dim to see without a telescope though,” NASA said in the statement.

If the comet stays on the track, it will be easily spotted with the help of binoculars, NASA said.

It might even be visible to the naked eye in dark areas, away from the city. Stargazers in the northern hemisphere can view the comet in the morning during January and people in the southern hemisphere will be able to spot it in early February, NASA said, the outlet reported.

“This comet isn’t expected to be quite the spectacle that Comet NEOWISE was back in 2020,” the agency added. “But it’s still an awesome opportunity to make a personal connection with an icy visitor from the distant outer solar system.”