A comet, discovered last March, is approaching the Earth, a comet that will not be dangerous to the Earth, it can be observed even with the naked eye in some places, but much better with binoculars or a telescope. When is the best time to observe it and what landmarks can you see in the sky to find it much faster.

The comet, named C/2022 E3 (ZTF), has traveled about 600 million kilometers in less than a year and will come close enough to Earth (42 million kilometers) to be seen with the naked eye. The comet was discovered by astronomers Bryce Bolin and Frank Muskie at the Zwicky Transient Facility Observatory in Palomar, California. You can view maps of the comet’s path here.

The comet will be best seen around February 1st, with a wider range of days when it can be seen successfully from January 30th to February 5th, provided the skies are clear and you are as far away from city lights as possible.

There are several apps for Android or iOS that can help you find a comet, provided you first calibrate your smartphone properly so that the app can accurately pinpoint the location of various celestial bodies. When you find it in the sky, a good tip is to get your eyes used to the darkness and stop looking at your phone or any other light source for 10-15 minutes.

If you can’t see it with the naked eye, looking at it through binoculars or a spotting scope will help a lot.

There is also an easier way to find a comet, if the sky is clear, of course.

There will be a few times when the comet will be easier to find because it will pass by bright objects: On February 5, it will fly past the star Capella, one of the brightest stars in the winter night sky. On February 11, the comet will pass by Mars, and on February 14, it will pass by the star Aldebaran.

When viewed through a telescope, or rather a telescope, the comet should appear green due to its chemical composition.

It will NOT be one of the brightest comets visible from Earth. One of the brightest comets in the last 150 years was seen from Spain in 1882, and the brightest comet seen by humans in the last century was called Ikeya-Seki, which could be admired especially from Japan in 1965.

Much has been written about the fact that this comet passed by the Earth 50,000 years ago and that it will return again in several tens of thousands of years.

It does not. Bryce Bolin, one of the two discoverers of C/2022 E3, answered a question from HotNews.ro that from the comet’s orbit it can be concluded that it originates from a region called the Hortus cloud, which is huge. space littered with the debris of icy comets left over from the formation of the Solar System. He also says that given the comet’s orbit, it cannot be said to pass by Earth once every 50,000 years.

And astronomer Adrian Shonka explained it to HotNews.ro: “This comet is not periodic, it will never visit us again, I don’t know where this information came from that it will visit us after 50,000 years. It is not a periodic comet and will never return to the Sun. Now we see it for the first and last time, this is its first pass by the Sun, but also the last.