{"id":14122,"date":"2023-02-04T15:43:40","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T15:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth"},"modified":"2023-02-04T15:53:15","modified_gmt":"2023-02-04T15:53:15","slug":"stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth","title":{"rendered":"Stunning Fluorescent Green Comet ZTF Makes Its Closest Approach to Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. <\/strong><\/span>Astronomers have long suspected that comets, which are rich in organic molecules, could have seeded life on Earth and other moons and planets across the galaxy. The icy, rocky objects lurk in the solar system\u2019s furthest reaches, only passing this way once in many thousands of years.<\/p>\n

Comet ZTF hasn\u2019t paid Earth a visit in roughly 50,000 years, but don\u2019t fret, because now is the time to see it. The comet is set to make its closest pass to our planet on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

With an apparent magnitude of +5, Comet ZTF is visible to the naked eye, but only in darker skies. It will appear in northern skies in the predawn morning, to the left of Polaris.<\/b> The comet will be about 26 million miles from Earth, or roughly one-third the distance from the Earth to the sun.<\/p>\n

As it reached its closest point to the sun, which was just outside Earth\u2019s orbit, astrophotographers watching the event in real time captured stunning images of its tail at its largest and brightest.<\/p>\n

Much ado has been made about the bright-green glow from the comet\u2019s nucleus. Timothy Schmidt, a professor of chemistry, molecules and space at the University of New South Wales in Australia, explained why in a Twitter post earlier this week. So the comet is glowing for the same reason a neon light does: it\u2019s being energized by an outside source, in this case, the sun\u2019s rays.<\/p>\n

Schmidt worked on a team that uncovered this property of C2 in a 2021 study aimed at finding out why comets\u2019 heads often glow green. They found that when bombarded with a laser, C2 split from a larger carbonate molecule and glowed, but then quickly broke apart into individual carbon atoms. This, they said, is why comets\u2019 heads glow green but not their tails, which are bits of the comet being blown away by the Sun\u2019s rays.<\/p>\n

For More News And Analysis About Sierra-Leone<\/a> Follow Africa-Press<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Africa-Press – Sierra-Leone. Astronomers have long suspected that comets, which are rich in organic molecules, could have seeded life on Earth and other moons and planets across the galaxy. The icy, rocky objects lurk in the solar system\u2019s furthest reaches, only passing this way once in many thousands of years. Comet ZTF hasn\u2019t paid Earth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":14120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[291,293,292],"class_list":["post-14122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-sierra-leone","tag-sierra-leone"],"yoast_head":"\nStunning Fluorescent Green Comet ZTF Makes Its Closest Approach to Earth - Sierra Leone<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Astronomers have long suspected that comets, which are rich in organic molecules, could have seeded life on Earth and ot ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stunning Fluorescent Green Comet ZTF Makes Its Closest Approach to Earth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Astronomers have long suspected that comets, which are rich in organic molecules, could have seeded life on Earth and ot ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sierra Leone\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-02-04T15:43:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-02-04T15:53:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/sites\/16\/2023\/02\/postQueueImg_1675512831.14.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1080\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"Stunning Fluorescent Green Comet ZTF Makes Its Closest Approach to Earth\",\"datePublished\":\"2023-02-04T15:43:40+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2023-02-04T15:53:15+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth\"},\"wordCount\":341,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/sites\/16\/2023\/02\/postQueueImg_1675512831.14.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Africa Press\",\"Africa Press-Sierra-Leone\",\"Sierra-Leone\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"miscellaneous\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/sierra-leone\/all-news\/stunning-fluorescent-green-comet-ztf-makes-its-closest-approach-to-earth\",\"name\":\"Stunning Fluorescent Green Comet ZTF Makes Its Closest Approach to Earth - 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