Newly Discovered Comet Will Be Visible To The Naked Eye
Just Look Up
The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), it was named after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first discovered it while it was passing Jupiter in March last year. After traveling from the far and cold reaches of our Solar System, the comet will come closest to the Sun on January 12 and pass nearest to Earth on February 1.
The comet will be easy enough to spot with a decent pair of binoculars, however, it may well be visible with the naked eye, provided you are not in a major city, due to light pollution. Another factor that will determine whether or not we will be able to see the comet with nothing more than our eyes is how bright the moon will shine one February 1st. If the moon illuminates the sky, the comet will not be visible.
Made of ice and dust and emitting a greenish aura, the comet is estimated to have a diameter of around 1 kilometer, said Nicolas Biver, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory. That makes it significantly smaller than NEOWISE, the last comet visible with an unaided eye, which passed Earth in March 2020, and Hale–Bopp, which swept by in 1997 with a potentially life-ending diameter of around 60 kilometers.
But the newest visit will come closer to Earth, which "may make up for the fact that it is not very big", Biver added. Biver went on to say: "We could also get a nice surprise and the object could be twice as bright as expected".
Once in a lifetime
C/2022 E3 is a truly rare visitor. The comet has spent most of its life in the outer reaches of our Solar system, at least 2,500 times more distant than the Earth is from the Sun. Biver said the comet was believed to have come from the Oort Cloud, a theorized vast sphere surrounding the Solar System that is home to mysterious icy objects. The last time the comet passed Earth was during the Upper Paleolithic period, when Neanderthals still roamed Earth. the comet's next visit to the inner Solar System was expected in another 50,000 years.
It is worth mentioning that among those closely watching will be the famous James Webb Space Telescope. However, it's pirpose will not be to take images. Instead the telescope will be focused on studying the comet's composition. Because C/2022 E3 will pass close to the Sun, it's outer layers will be boiled off. Pairing the boiling off of the layers with the comets proximity to Earth will make it easier for the telescopes to measure its composition.
On February 1st, make sure you look up at the sky!