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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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