How to watch the rare green comet whiz past Earth tonight - Livescience.com

A comet with a greenish glow volition marque its closest attack to Earth since the property of the Neanderthals contiguous (Feb. 1 to 2), and if you look successful the close spot astatine the close time, you mightiness beryllium capable to spot it. 

The comet, known arsenic C/2022 E3 (ZTF), volition travel wrong 26.4 cardinal miles (42.8 cardinal kilometers) of our planet, its closest attack successful astir 50,000 years, according to EarthSky (opens successful caller tab). The comet has been brightening successful the nighttime entity since January and volition walk betwixt the orbits of Mars and Earth implicit the adjacent mates of nights, traveling astatine astir 128,500 mph (207,000 km/h).

Viewers successful the Northern Hemisphere who person a wide presumption of the nighttime entity distant from important airy contamination volition beryllium capable to spot the comet without a telescope. If you're incapable to get to a spot with wide skies, however, you tin inactive drawback the enactment by tuning into the Virtual Telescope Project's livestream (opens successful caller tab) of the event, which volition commencement astatine 11 p.m. EST. 

To presumption the comet, look to the bluish entity betwixt the Big Dipper and the North Star.

"It's the spot of entity instantly to the close of North, bounded betwixt the Dippers," Ben Burress, an astronomer astatine Chabot Space and Science Center successful California, told KQED (opens successful caller tab). "Right present the comet is betwixt the Big and Little Dippers. It volition look similar a tiny fuzzy spot of light, perchance somewhat greenish."

Why green? As comets whiz by the sun, the star's vigor vaporizes the comet's ices into gas, which signifier a coma — a tenuous, short-lived ambiance astir the rocky body. The colour of that coma depends connected the constitution of its gas. In the lawsuit of Comet C/2022 E3, immoderate of that state contains diatomic carbon, a molecule made up of 2 fused c atoms. When those molecules are blasted by ultraviolet radiation, they glow green.

Comet C/2022 E3 was discovered successful March 2022 by astronomers utilizing the Zwicky Transient Facility successful California.