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[79]SMART NEWS

               Catch a Glimpse of a Rare Green Comet This Month

  Skywatchers should be able to spot the once-in-a-lifetime spectacle
  with binoculars

  [80]Teresa Nowakowski

  Staff contributor
  January 12, 2023 4:17 p.m.
    __________________________________________________________________

  a green-blue comet against stars Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) viewed through a
  telescope on December 24, 2022. It will reach its nearest point to
  Earth in early February. Dan Bartlett

  This month, a recently discovered [81]comet with green glow will make
  its first trip through our inner solar system in thousands of
  years--and maybe even for the first time ever.

  Comet [82]C/2022 E[83]3[84] (ZTF), named for its discovery
  last March at the [85]Zwicky Transient Facility in California, will
  reach its closest position to the sun on Thursday night, January 12,
  before proceeding en route toward our planet. The mass of ice and
  organic material will reach its closest point to Earth--just over 26
  million miles away--on February 2.

  Over the course of this month, viewers in the Northern Hemisphere
  should look for the icy body as it moves to the northwest in the
  morning sky, right before dawn. (Southern Hemisphere hopefuls will have
  to wait until the beginning of February to catch a glimpse.)

  Stargazers should have the best chance of seeing the comet on January
  21, when the new moon phase will "provide the ideal dark skies needed
  to spot" it, per [86]Space.com's Robert Lea. On January 30, it will
  appear near the North Star, report Don Machholz and Eddie Irizarry of
  [87]EarthSky.

  Without a telescope, the comet "will most likely look like a faint,
  greenish smudge in the sky rather than a bright object," writes Kate
  Howells of the [88]Planetary Society. But it should be easy to spot
  with binoculars, and potentially even visible to the naked eye in dark
  skies.

  Still, "comets are notoriously unpredictable," says Preston Dyches of
  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a [89]video. And, because C/2022 E3
  is a long-period comet, its appearance is even less predictable than
  its brethren that take shorter trips around the sun.

  Whether they take 200 or 20 million years to complete an orbit, these
  "[90]dirty snowballs" are more than just spectacular cosmic sights.
  They may have delivered life essentials like water and organic
  compounds to our early planet, and studying them could reveal clues
  about the beginning of our solar system.

  A comet develops its eye-catching atmosphere from the sun's heat, which
  transforms some of its icy center directly into gas. This forms a cloud
  of dust and gas that can be pushed away from the sun by [91]solar wind
  and radiation, creating the characteristic tails.

  While C/2022 E3 is no [92]Neowise--it's expected to be less bright than
  that comet's spectacle in 2020--it will be worth taking a look for.
  After all, if you do catch a glimpse of its green [93]coma, you'll get
  a once-in-a-lifetime sight: Jon Giorgini, a senior analyst at the Jet
  Propulsion Laboratory, tells [94]NPR's Juliana Kim that "if C/2022 E3
  has ever passed through the solar system before, it would have last
  been seen in the sky more than 10,000 years ago."

  Teresa Nowakowski | [95]READ MORE

  Teresa Nowakowski is an intern for Smithsonian magazine.

  [96]Astronomy [97]Comets [98]Outer Space [99]Sky Watching Guide

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