The last visible Ice Age comet to pass Earth was in early 2023

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A comet that last appeared in the night sky when Neanderthals were still roaming the Earth is set to reappear early next year.

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) orbits the Sun every 50,000 years and will pass within 26 million miles of Earth on February 1, 2023, making it visible to the naked eye.

It is already visible with binoculars and low-level telescopes when the sky is clear, and should become visible without specialized equipment by mid-to-late January.

Astronomers have already been tracking the E3 comet, revealing a blue-green coma with a golden tail.

E3 will be the first comet to light up the sky since Neowise in summer 2020.

Comet E3 captured by NASA astronomers in December 2022

(NASA)

The E3 comet was first discovered by the Zwicky Transit Facility (ZTF) in California, and the E3 comet has been imaged by NASA astronomers ever since.

Comet E3 got its name for being the third comet to be discovered in the fifth fortnight of the year.

Astronomers advise anyone hoping to see an E3 comet to choose a dark location devoid of ambient light and allow their eyes to adjust for 30 minutes.

Specialized smartphone apps and websites can also be used to locate the comet in the sky, such as Star Chart, Sky Safari, and SkyView.

Comet tracking website In-The-Sky noted that “at their core, comets are highly unpredictable objects, because their brightness depends on the scattering of sunlight from dust particles in the comet’s coma and tail.”

“This dust is constantly flowing away from the comet’s nucleus, and its density at any given time governs the rate of sublimation of the ice in the comet’s nucleus, as it is heated by the sun’s rays. It also depends on how much dust is mixed with this ice. This is very difficult to predict in advance, and can to be highly variable even between successive appearances of the same comet.”

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