Latest News, International – A comet not seen since Neanderthal times passed by Earth 50,000 years ago is set to return in a week, but astrophotographers are getting a peek at the once-in-a-generation ball of ice.
Reported from dailymail.co.uk on February 7, Andrew McCarthy , from Arizona , took this stunning image C/2022 E3 (ZTF), capturing a bright green coma and long, glowing tail.
Currently, E3 is visible only with a telescope, but will be visible to the naked eye when it reaches Earth’s perigee at its closest point to Earth in early February, when it is 26 million miles away.
McCarthy told the media that he spent the entire morning tracking the comet and “the result is a pile of about 45 photos taken over an hour between clouds.”
The final result, which shows the comet’s natural color, is a stunning image of its green coma and glowing tail
McCarthy went on to explain that there were a lot of clouds in the sky the day she tracked E3 and took photos every chance she got.
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“The image actually has a lot of artifacts from the clouds and is near the street lights,” he told the media.
“As a result, raw images look terrible. You can see some artifacts from the clouds here, showing uneven patches.”
“You can also see how the stars and comets are in different positions during the clock, which also has to be corrected (which is a very delicate procedure).”
McCarthy says he does a lot of processing to clean up the image for stunning results, but the ion tails visible in the unprocessed photo are “accurate.”
And he tells the media that the colors in the pictures are real.
In early March, astronomers discovered Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) using wide-field survey cameras at the Zwicky Transient Facility.
Since then, the new long-period comet has become very bright and is now sweeping across the northern constellation Corona Borealis in the early morning sky.
Stargazers will be able to tell the difference between the comet and the stars around it because there will be trails of dust that follow it.
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A glowing green coma, a cloud of gas, will stick around it.
This gas is formed when comets pass close to the sun, causing their ice to change shape.
Comets are notoriously unpredictable, but C/2022 E3’s brightness, given its current trends, should make it easy to spot with binoculars or a telescope.
However, those without special equipment need not worry, as it can even be seen with the naked eye if the sky is dark enough later this month.
McCarthy shared an unprocessed image of the comet
He told the Boston Globe: “Comets are the cats of the solar system; they do whatever they want.”
“Like cats, they are fluffy. Comets have been observed to have strange behavior, such as fragmenting or disintegrating.”
“But there really isn’t a strong correlation between distance to the sun and the type of disintegration event that occurs. It can break up on its way before it approaches the sun, or even after.”
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The NASA postdoctoral program fellow said he and Caltech senior staff scientist Frank Masci were at the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory when artificial intelligence tagged the comet as unknown.
If the unaided eye can spot this newly discovered comet, it will be the first time since NEOWISE will fly by Earth in 2020, though it won’t be nearly as spectacular.
