Country: Here’s the first photo of the ‘green comet’ in Portugal (it won’t come back for another 50,000 years)
It is the first released photo of the green comet captured from Portugal. It is a space rock, named E3, which is about to make its closest approach to Earth in 50,000 years.
The photograph illustrating the news was released by the meteorological portal Meteo Trás os Montes – Portugal. It was captured this Tuesday in Castanheira de Pera, Leiria district, and is signed by Miguel Marques.
“Having the opportunity to observe a comet is a once-in-a-lifetime event for a human being and we’ve had that luck twice! Yesterday we went to the Walkways of Ribeira das Quelhas, in Castanheira de Pera and took advantage of the night to contemplate the sky, without rushing. We went still with the sunlight, we saw it setting and being “chased” by Venus, Saturn and the Moon – a beautiful conjunction to see, too!”, said the author.
“This comet is different from the other one. Even if we are in a place with low light emission, it is not easy to see it with the naked eye, so we were firing clicks until it popped up on our screen. And it came!”contour.
OC/2022 E3 is an Oort cloud comet that was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility on March 2, 2022.
The passenger comet reaches its perihelion (when it is closest to the Sun) on January 12, 2023, at a distance of 1.11 AU (166 million km) and the closest pass to Earth will be on February 1, 2023, at a distance of 0.28 AU (42 million km).
the comet can get brighter than magnitude 6 and become visible to the naked eye as a small fuzzy spot on a dark enough skybut it can be seen from Portugal only with binoculars.
C/2022 E3 has been visible since the 12th, but it can be observed from Portugal thanks to the openings of cloudiness and the change in the Moon’s cycle.
Thus, to observe the comet it will have to be in a place with almost no artificial light around.. If you can spot it, using binoculars, you might even be able to see the tail. According to NASA, the best time to see the comet is before dawn.
Currently, the comet is heading towards the constellation of Boötes and close to Hercules (it may see an interactive sky map here).