Jakarta –
Comet green will appear closest to Earth around February 1-2, 2023. Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) takes 50,000 years to complete its orbit around the Sun, so it last appeared closest to Earth about 50,000 years ago or in the stone age.
Comets are members of the solar system in the form of a cosmic iceball of frozen gas, rock and dust. Comets also circle the Sun like the Earth, cited by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) website.
Because they look like smoky or streaked lights, comets are sometimes called shooting stars, even though they aren’t stars.
The erroneous mention of “shooting stars” also often occurs in the fall of asteroids or meteors. The difference is that meteors are composed mostly of rock, while comets tend to be composed of ice, as quoted by the US University of Virginia website.
Green Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was originally discovered by astronomers using a wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), California, USA, in early March 2022.
At the time, the light was still too dim to be seen through a telescope. However, this comet with a green dust and ion tail began to illuminate on December 19, 2022.
Thus, this green comet will be closest to the Sun on January 12, 2023 and closest to Earth on February 1, 2023.
NASA astronomers discovered they had never seen this comet before because the green comet takes decades to complete one orbit around the sun.
University of Virginia astronomer Edward M Murphy said the brightness of this comet in the sky is hard to predict until it actually gets close to Earth. Also, 50,000 years ago, there were no observational records of how bright this green comet was as it crossed Earth’s sky.
If this green comet appears to be difficult to see in Earth’s sky, then there will be another 50,000 years of observing opportunities.
“Sometimes comet it shines much brighter than we think and makes a beautiful appearance in the sky. There’s no way to know whether this green comet could be so bright because it hasn’t been seen in recorded history,” Murphy said.
Watch a video “December 2022 Sky phenomenon: Geminid-Ursid meteor shower“
[Gambas:Video 20detik]
(twu/nwk)
