First Time In 50,000 Years: Rare Green Comet Appearing To Earth Tonight

On Wednesday night, the rare green comet that orbits the sun will be seen from Earth for the first time since roughly 50,000 year in the Neanderthal Age.

About 26.4 million miles from Earth, Comet C/2022 E3, which was discovered last March by astronomers at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego, will leave a trail of dust behind it as appears near the constellation Camelopardalis toward the northeast. The comet’s brightness has increased as it crosses the northern constellation Corona Borealis.

“The comet is in the north of our skies, currently close to Polaris, the pole star directly due north,” Jake Foster from the Royal Observatory explained. The Guardian. “The comet is best viewed after midnight, when it reaches its highest point in the sky. It will move a significant distance across the sky from night to night as it makes its way towards the constellation of Taurus over the coming weeks. With a pair of binoculars or a small telescope, you should be able to spot the comet as a faint green blob. It you are lucky and your skies are particularly dark you may even be able to see one of its vast tails, too.”

“While it may yet become possible to see it with the unaided eye from an extremely dark site, you are much better off pointing a pair of binoculars or a small telescope at it,” Dr Greg Brown from the Royal Observatory Greenwich cautioned. “Easiest to see will be the brighter head of the comet, but, if you are lucky, you may spot one of its two tails sweeping out from it, each made of material being jettisoned from its rapidly warming icy surface.”

NASA’s Stefanie Millam, a planetary scientist, stated that NASA will study the comet using its James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). “We’re going to be looking for the fingerprints of given molecules that we can’t access from the ground. Because JWST’s so sensitive, we’re expecting new discoveries.”

The comet’s green color is due to sunlight and carbon-based molecules found in the dust and ice surrounding it.

Comets typically come from the Oort cloud at the solar system’s edge, farther even than the Kuiper Belt, and is thought to consist of a icy space debris that forms a giant spherical shell that surrounds the solar system. It can contain billions or trillions of objects.

Comets come close to the sun and melt. This causes gas and dust to become molten and plasma to release them from their surfaces. “tail.”

Some experts believe that Comet C/2022 E3 was released because of an unusually strong solar winds emanating from the sun via a coronal Mass ejection (CME).