{"id":27506,"date":"2023-01-04T09:10:03","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T09:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/04\/comet-returns-for-earth-flyby-after-50000-years-the-register\/"},"modified":"2023-01-04T09:10:03","modified_gmt":"2023-01-04T09:10:03","slug":"comet-returns-for-earth-flyby-after-50000-years-the-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2023\/01\/04\/comet-returns-for-earth-flyby-after-50000-years-the-register\/","title":{"rendered":"Comet returns for Earth flyby after 50,000 years \u2022 The Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Get a look while you can: a comet that last graced Earth’s sky tens of thousands of years ago is back, and may now be visible to the naked eye \u2013 or at least those with binoculars \u2013 later this month and into February.<\/p>\n

And not only has C\/2022 E3 (ZTF)<\/a> been away for quite some time, it may never come this way again, astronomers said. Those who want to see the green-tailed chunk of space ice should clear their early-morning calendars<\/a> for late January and early February, depending on their hemisphere of residence, and hope it maintains its current level of brightness.<\/p>\n

E3 will make its closest approach to the Sun on January 12, and will make its closest pass of Earth on February 1, NASA said. Comets are hard to predict, the Americans added<\/a>, but if E3’s brightness trends hold, “it’ll be easy to spot with binoculars, and it’s just possible it could become visible to the unaided eye under dark skies.”<\/p>\n

A return visit tens of thousands of years in the making<\/h3>\n

Astronomers identified E3 in March last year, and tagged it as a long-period comet believed to originate from the Oort cloud, a shell of comet-like objects, planetoids, and icy bodies that boffins said<\/a> can be “as large as mountains \u2013 and sometimes larger.”<\/p>\n

The Oort Cloud, evidence of which is theoretical and largely extrapolated from the existence of long-period comets, is incredibly distant to the point that it really lies in interstellar space.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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