Dalia Gutiérrez/Reform Agencies
Friday, January 20, 2023 | 10:21
Monterrey, NL.- At this moment, a unique celestial body is visiting the Solar System and can be observed from Earth without the need for a telescope.
Discovered in March 2022, comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has the particularity that its orbital period is 50,000 years, which means that it has not come close to this planet since the Upper Paleolithic, the time of the Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals.
“This comet, although we already know that it returns approximately every 50,000 years, there was no observatory to appreciate it,” says Pablo Lonnie Pacheco, science communicator and astronomy instructor at the San Joaquín Hot Springs Observatory.
“Although it is a comet that periodically returns to the Sun, it is newly discovered.”
The celestial body passed its closest point to the sun a few days ago and by February 1 and 2 it will be about 40 million kilometers away from Earth, the closest it will get to this planet.
To have a magnitude of the distance, Venus can be taken as a reference, which at its closest point to Earth is less than 40 million kilometers.
The comet is already visible, but binoculars are required and it is necessary to move away from the City, since dust and artificial light prevent seeing the dim stars.
“It looks like a speck. The comet looks like that, as if it were a fuzzy, dim little star,” Pacheco details.
Another aspect that characterizes this celestial body is that in the photographs that have been taken of it, it can be seen with a greenish tail.
However, says Pacheco, it is not possible to be sure if that hue can be observed, because when the light from the comet is very dim, as is the case with this one, the human eye does not distinguish the color.
“People can be disappointed, say ‘it doesn’t look like it does in the pictures,'” he says.
“Long exposure photography has the advantage that you can pack a lot of light into a single image. So it looks brighter, more structured, and it looks colourful.”
Even so, he notes, so far it is the brightest comet of 2023.
look north
Comets, explains Pacheco, are objects that orbit the Sun and are made mainly of water ice or carbon dioxide, and contain organic matter, that is, molecules related to carbon.
Whether a comet is bright or attractive depends on how close it gets to the Sun and Earth.
When it approaches the sun, it deepens, the ice changes from a solid to a gaseous state, a cloud of gas and dust is formed that can be the size of the Earth or even larger, and it becomes visible.
“If you see a whitish part in the photos, it is the one that is reflecting the sunlight,” he details. “If we see a greenish stain, like the one in the Cozumel sea, it means that it is a gas called cyanogen.”
As February approaches, the comet will be better appreciated. The best time to observe it is after 4:00 in the morning.
To look for it, you must turn to the north and search between the constellations of Ursa Minor and Auriga.
