A new comet has appeared — but you’ll have to work to see it
The long-forgotten comet has recently returned to Earth’s night skies, appearing as a faint eraser-smudge that some have even spotted with the naked eye in the darkest areas. Catching a glimpse of it won’t be easy, but considering it’s your last shot, it may be worth a try.
Experts point to Feb. 1 or 2, which is when the comet will make its closest pass to Earth, as the most opportune time but — with binoculars or a telescope — you can probably spot it starting now.Comets are large bodies made of dust and ice. They orbit the sun in elliptical paths, accelerating as they approach perihelion , and slow somewhat as they recede to the far outer reaches of the solar system.or the time it takes to complete an orbit and begin a new one.
Other “long-period” comets may take as much as 250,000 years to revisit the center of the solar system. Those intrepid bodies operate on orbits that take them to the system’s distant outskirts — often 50,000 times farther than short-period comets. Those long-period comets compose the Oort cloud, or a band of cometary debris on the fringes of the solar system.The frozen core of a comet, known as a nucleus, is usually less than 10 miles wide.
A second wake, known as an “ion tail,” which is tied to ultraviolet solar radiation causing electrons to leap from the coma, always points directly away from the sun because of the “solar wind.”Comet C/2022 E3 was discovered by two astronomers on March 2, 2022. They were using the Zwicky Transient Facility, made up of an ultrasensitive camera attached to the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California’s Palomar Mountain Range.
At that point, it was orders of magnitude too dim to be seen with the naked eye . By November, it had brightened to the point of almost being visible to the highest-quality binoculars from dark areas. It was found to have a period of roughly 50,000 years.It is believed that C2, or diatomic carbon , is present in the head of the comet. When excited by incoming solar radiation, it emits photons at wavelengths we see to be green.In a land far, far away.
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