"By April it will be close to the Sun in the sky and a lot fainter, so will be very hard to find even with a telescope." Royal Astronomical Society, told Newsweek. A good moonless window will then open up again in the evening from February 7, although the comet will be fading.Īfter traversing the constellation Camelopardalis, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) will move through Auriga and Taurus, and will likely fade below naked eye visibility by the second week of February, Robert Massey, deputy executive director of the U.K. In February, it will then be in a constellation called Camelopardalis."įrom January 29, moonlight will pose growing interference in the evening, and between February 2 and 6 there will be bright moonlight all night. If you want to try and find it manually and know your constellations then the comet is passing through the constellation Draco, and will pass Ursa Minor by the end of the month. "Just make sure the one you use is updated to include the comet. "The easiest way to find it will be to use a stargazing app on a smartphone, such as Stellarium," he said. "It should be fairly close to the bright star Polaris which might help you find it by eye," Christopher Pattison, a senior research associate with the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) at the University of Portsmouth, in the United Kingdom, told Newsweek. But most people will need binoculars or a telescope, particularly if you are located in an urban area. There have already been reports of the comet being observed with the naked eye from very dark, rural locations with little light pollution-visible as a small, diffuse smudge. The object's observed magnitude is currently just below +6, which means it is theoretically visible to the naked eye under ideal conditions, although practically speaking it may be difficult to spot unaided from many locations. The comet is expected to continue brightening until around the time of its close approach, although predicting the brightness of comets is a notoriously tricky business. Read more Mysterious green comet nears Earth, revealing secrets of time and space On Friday and Saturday, on the other hand, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) will be higher than 25 degrees from 7 p.m. until dawn for Thursday evening, figures from Sky & Telescope Magazine show. Tonight the comet will be at least 25 degrees high in the sky from 10 p.m. The next four evenings-January 25-28-present a decent viewing opportunity given that there will be relatively little interference from moonlight, not to mention that the comet is currently a circumpolar object for observers in North America, meaning it will not set below the horizon. Tonight, it lies in the constellation Draco but it is moving in the direction of the North Star, or Polaris, and by Thursday night, it will have moved into the constellation Ursa Minor, otherwise known as the Little Dipper, where it will remain for another three days. This process forms a glowing atmosphere around the comet's nucleus, known as a coma-which, in the case of C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is glowing green-and two vast tails of gas and dust.Īt present, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is visible in the night sky-both morning and evening-for observers in the Northern Hemisphere. A comet known as C/2022 E3 (ZTF) will soon make a close approach to Earth.
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