From mid-southern latitudes, Comet ZTF will first become visible low in the northern sky in Auriga in early February. In this Spanish language version, the comet's position is shown every 3 nights for latitude 35° south at 10 p.m. Even 10× binoculars will reveal movement in an hour or two. Come month’s end, Comet ZTF will be trucking along at the rate of 6.5° a day! That’s better than ¼° per hour, making its motion relative to the background stars obvious through a telescope after just a few minutes. The comet becomes a circumpolar object for the northern states and Canada around January 17th and for the rest of the continental U.S. It's headed southward in January and will cross the ecliptic plane on February 12th.Īs Comet ZTF E3 closes in on our planet in the coming weeks, its apparent motion across the northern sky and altitude increase quickly. With an inclination of 109°, Comet ZTF E3's orbit is steeply tilted to the plane of the planets. Perhaps one day the peripatetic puffball will become another star system's first interstellar comet. While its inbound period was 53,000 years, due to perturbations by the planets ZTF is now headed out of the solar system altogether. Perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) occurred on January 12th at 166 million kilometers (103 million miles). Closest approach to Earth occurs on February 1st, when the comet will whiz past at 42 million kilometers (26 million miles). On January 16–17, you’ll find our fuzzy friend in northeastern Boötes headed northwest at around 1.5° per day. At the time, the 17th-magnitude speck was nearly 5 astronomical units from Earth, nearly identical to Jupiter’s average distance from the Sun. More observations by additional observers confirmed Sato’s report. One night later, Japanese observer Hirohisa Sato’s photographs of the object revealed a small coma, changing its status to a comet. Its distance from the Sun (r) and Earth (d) in astronomical units (a.u.) are also shown.Ĭ/2022 E3 was discovered on March 2, 2022, and initially reported as an asteroid candidate. The same focal length, camera, and similar exposure time were used for each photo except November 19th due to the comet's low altitude. This image sequence shows the comet's evolution from a 14th-magnitude blip on June 4, 2022, (upper left) to a binocular-bright object with two tails on December 28th. His analysis indicates a recent slowdown in the comet's rate of brightening, with a peak brightness closer to 6.0 magnitude. Not to throw shade, but Jose Pablo Navarro, amateur astronomer and administrator of the Facebook group Comet Asteroid Meteor Watch, examined 2,509 visual and CCD observations of the comet from the Minor Planet Center database. Expect it to peak around magnitude 5.5 at the end of January into early February. Thanks to clouds and moonlight I last saw it in late December at 8th magnitude in Corona Borealis.Ĭurrent visual magnitude estimates put Comet ZTF at between magnitude 6.5 and 7.0. Observers with dark, moonless skies may even spot the comet with the naked eye (dimly) as it sails between the the Big and Little Dippers later this month. While it’s not all that, this Oort Cloud refugee is already visible in binoculars and a pretty sight in modest telescopes. Two cameras were used for the composite image - an 11-inch RASA to capture a detailed black-and-white image, and a DSLR with a 280-mm focal length lens for the color shot.ĭazzling green comet! First appearance in 50,000 years! Watch it streak across the sky! Based on recent headlines you’d think Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) was the greatest astronomical event of modern times. Comet ZTF (C/2022 E3) displays a bright, fan-shaped dust tail and an ion tail more than 4° long on January 12, 2023.

Comet data for skychart