If you want to get your own breathtaking photos of comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), be sure to see our guides on the best telescopes and best binoculars that can help you get a closer look. "The weather in Central Europe is very bad and I have to travel a lot to see the comet," Jäger wrote. He admitted that weather in this part of the year is not ideal for this rare celestial encounter, however. Jäger, who has photographed more than 1,100 comets since he took up astrophotography four decades ago, is certain to take more awe-inspiring images, which you can find on his Twitter account. The comet will soon become visible to the naked eye, experts say, and will reach its closest distance to Earth on Feb.1, zooming past our planet at about one quarter the sun-Earth distance. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Ĭ/2022 E3 (ZTF ), which was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at the Palomar Observatory in California in March 2022, is making its first close approach to Earth in about 50,000 years. Sunspots are darker, cooler regions visible on the surface of the sun that feature twisted and dense magnetic fields, which give rise to solar flares and CMEs.Ī NASA image showing the path of comet C/2022 E3 ZTF across the January sky for the Northern Hemisphere. space weather forecaster Met Office, so more CMEs can occur as the comet comes closer to us. Currently, there are eight numbered sunspots traversing the sun's Earth-facing disk, according to the U.K. added that multiple CMEs have swept past Comet ZTF this month as its visit to our region of the solar system coincides with a surge in the activity on the sun's surface. While the comet itself is usually no more than a few miles wide, the tail can stretch for hundreds of thousands of miles across the inner solar system, providing the unusual celestial spectacle that gets astronomers and astrophotographers buzzing. Read more: Green comet a rare 'messenger from the outer reaches of solar system'Ī comet's tail is made of vaporized material and dust released by the icy body as it heats up closer to the sun. "CMEs hitting comets can cause magnetic reconnection in comet tails, sometimes ripping them off entirely." "A piece of Comet ZTF's tail has been pinched off and is being carried away by the solar wind," wrote. CMEs are bursts of highly energetic particles from the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, that travel across the solar system, interfering with the atmospheres of planets and other bodies. According to, this disruption in the tail is likely caused by turbulent space weather, namely the stronger-than-usual solar wind that has been released during a recent coronal mass ejection (CME).
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