Look up! What's the green comet last seen in Stone Age streaking past Earth?

Next week, the sky will witness a scene 55,000 years in the making. A bright green comet, which last passed by the Earth during the Stone Age, will streak across the heavens. The comet, named C/2022 E3 (ZTF), will pass nearest to the Earth on 1 February after travelling from the icy reaches of our solar system. But what do we know about ZTF? Let’s take a closer look: ZTF was named after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March 2022. It was detected by astronomers Frank Masci and Bryce Bolin, as per News.com.Au. As per Yahoo News, the Zwicky Transient Facility, a public-private partnership which aims at studying the optical night sky, discovered the planet while using a wide-field survey camera.

The comet was initially misidentified as an asteroid.

Scientists ultimately properly identified it after it shifted from Jupiter’s inner orbit and brightened, as per Yahoo News. Made of ice and dust and emitting a greenish aura, the comet is estimated to have a diameter of around a kilometre, said Nicolas Biver, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory. The last time the comet passed Earth was during the Upper Paleolithic period, when Neanderthals still roamed Earth. “This one is only here every 50,000 years, so we’re never going to see this specific kind of comet again. So, it’s worth trying to take a look at it if you can,” York University assistant professor Sarah Rugheimer, the Allan I. Carswell Chair for the Public Understanding of Astronomy, told the website Global News. The comet is believed to have come from the Oort Cloud, a theorised vast sphere surrounding the Solar System that is home to mysterious icy objects. As per The Guardian, ZTF will get nearest to the planet next Wednesday and Thursday at a distance of 2.5 light minutes – 179,87,547.48 kilometers. The comet “will be brightest when it is closest to the Earth”, Thomas Prince, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology who works at the Zwicky Transient Facility, told AFP. It will be easy to spot with a good pair of binoculars and likely even with the naked eye, provided the sky is not too illuminated by city lights or the Moon. Its green hue is said to come from diatomic carbon in ZTF’s head. It is the ultraviolet rays that cause the molecule to give off the green light, as per the newspaper. AFP quoting an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory, said the comet is estimated to have a diameter of around a kilometre. That makes it significantly smaller than NEOWISE, the last comet visible with an unaided eye, which passed Earth in March 2020, and Hale-Bopp, which swept by in 1997 with a potentially life-ending diameter of around 60 kilometres. NASA in a statement said, “This comet isn’t expected to be quite the spectacle that Comet NEOWISE was back in 2020. But it’s still an awesome opportunity to make a personal connection with an icy visitor from the distant outer solar system.” But the newest visit will come closer to Earth, which “may make up for the fact that it is not very big”, Biver said. “Comets are notoriously unpredictable, but if this one continues its current trend in brightness, it’ll be easy to spot with binoculars, and it’s just possible it could become visible to the unaided eye under dark skies,” NASA said in a statement. The comet has spent most of its life “at least 2,500 times more distant than the Earth is from the Sun”, Prince said. Prince said the comet’s next visit to the inner Solar System was expected in another 50,000 years.

But others disagree.

Biver said there was a possibility that after this visit the comet will be “permanently ejected from the Solar System”. According to Space.com, ZTF will never return to Earth again as it is travelling on an open parabolic orbit. Among those closely watching will be the James Webb Space Telescope. However, it will not take images, instead studying the comet’s composition, Biver said. The closer the comet is to Earth, the easier it is for telescopes to measure its composition “as the Sun boils off its outer layers”, Prince said. This “rare visitor” will give “us information about the inhabitants of our Solar system well beyond the most distant planets”, he added. With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.