JAKARTA - For the first time in 50,000 years, a newly discovered comet will be visible in the sky as it streaks past Earth and the Sun in the coming weeks.
The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first saw it pass Jupiter in March last year.
The atronoms said the comet would approach the Sun on January 12, and pass closest to Earth on February 1. Can be seen without the need for help from the telescope.
Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is made of ice and dust and emits a greenish aura, estimated to have a diameter of about one kilometer (0.62 miles).
Making it much smaller than NEOWISE, the last comet seen with the naked eye, which passed Earth in March 2020, and HaleCopp, passed in 1997 at a diameter of about 60 kilometers.
A professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology working at the Zwicky Transient Facility, Thomas Prince said comets had spent most of its life at least 2,500 times more away from Earth than the Sun.
The last time comets passed through Earth was during the Young Paleolitic period, when Neanderthals were still exploring Earth. Prince said the next comet visit to the inner Solar System is expected to be in the next 50,000 years.
The James Webb Space Telescope will observe it. However, the tool will not take pictures, but study the composition of comets.
"The closer the comet to Earth, the easier it will be for the telescope to measure its composition as the Sun boils from its outermost layers. These rare visitors will provide us with information about the inhabitants of our Solar System far beyond the farthest planet," Prince said.
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