Jakarta –
NASA has announced that a comet that last appeared in the night sky during the Ice Age will reappear in February 2023. Called comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), it orbits the Sun every 50,000 years.
Quoted from Interesting engineeringcomet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is expected to pass within 26 million miles of Earth on February 1, 2023.
This comet can be seen with the naked eye in mid to late January. For those who want to observe it more clearly, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) can be seen using binoculars and low-level telescopes when the sky is clear.
The appearance of a greenish blue comet with a golden tail
Astronomers who tracked comet E3 say it is shaped like a comma, is turquoise in color, and has a golden tail.
E3 was first discovered by astronomers Bryce Bolin and Frank Masci using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey on March 2, 2022, and has been photographed by NASA astronomers ever since.
“Since then, the new long-period comet has become very bright and is now crossing the northern constellation Corona Borealis in the pre-dawn sky. Still too faint to be seen without a telescope,” NASA wrote in its post on the report. famous comet.
“But this beautiful telescoping image taken on Dec. 19 shows a lighter greenish comma-shaped comet, a broad, short dust tail, and a long, dim ion tail that spans a 2.5-degree wide field of view.”
“On its path through the inner solar system, comet E3 2022 will be at perihelion, closest to the Sun, on January 12. Then it will be at perigee, closest to our planet, on February 1. The comet’s brightness is unpredictable, but sometimes this is C/2022 E3 (ZTF) only visible to the naked eye in a clear dark night sky,” NASA explained.
Anyone wishing to view Comet E3, however, would need to be in a very dark place and allow their eyes to acclimate for about half an hour.
Amateur astronomer apps and specialized websites, such as Star Chart, Sky Safari and SkyView, can also be used to help plot the comet’s position in the sky.
“Comets are inherently highly unpredictable objects, as their luminosity depends on the scattering of sunlight by dust particles in the comet’s coma and tail areas,” wrote comet tracker website In-The-Sky.
“This dust is constantly flowing away from the comet’s nucleus, and its density at any given time is determined by the rate of sublimation of the ice in the comet’s nucleus, as it is heated by sunlight. It also depends on the amount of dust mixed with that ice. This it is very difficult to predict and can vary greatly even between successive appearances of the same comet,” they explained.
Watch a video “4 sky phenomena that will happen in December 2022“
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