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A comet that last appeared in the night sky when Neanderthals still roamed the Earth is set to reappear early next year.
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) orbits the Sun every 50,000 years and will pass within 26 million miles of Earth on February 1, 2023, making it visible to the naked eye.
It is already visible with binoculars and low-level telescopes when the sky is clear, and should be visible without specialized equipment by mid-to-late January.
Astronomers have already tracked comet E3, revealing a blue-green coma and a golden tail.
E3 will be the first comet to light up the sky since Comet Neowise in summer 2020.
Comet E3 captured by astronomers at NASA in December 2022
(Nasa)
First discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) in California, Comet E3 has been photographed by NASA astronomers.
Comet E3 was named for being the third comet discovered in the fifth fortnight of the year.
Astronomers advise anyone who wants to see Comet E3 to choose a dark location free of ambient light and allow 30 minutes for their eyes to adjust.
Specialized smartphone apps and websites can also be used to determine the comet’s position in the sky, such as Star Chart, Sky Safari, and SkyView.
“Comets are inherently highly unpredictable objects, as their brightness depends on the scattering of sunlight from dust particles in the comet’s coma and tail,” noted the comet-tracking website In-The- Sky.
“This dust is continuously moving away from the comet’s nucleus, and its density at any given time is governed by the rate of sublimation of the ice in the comet’s nucleus as it is heated by the sun’s rays. It also depends on the amount of dust to mix with this ice. This is very difficult to predict in advance and can be very variable even between successive appearances of the same comet.”