The green comet is approaching Earth and appears in the night sky – dpa

The photo was taken in a dark setting on a bog near Draper in Lower Saxony. According to the Society of Friends of the Stars, the comet, which passes our planet only every 50,000 years, will come into its closest approach to Earth at about 42 million kilometers on February 1st. This is approximately a third of the distance from Earth to the Sun.

According to astronomers, a good time to observe is the end of January, when the moonlight is less bright in the sky and the weather cooperates. Then they can even be seen with the naked eye, but in any case with binoculars or a telescope.

The comet has a green shimmering coma, a kind of particle crust, covering about 50,000 km. According to the German Aerospace Center, the green color comes from a gas produced by heating in the sun. The celestial body C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is so named because it was first seen from an observatory in the United States last year as part of a program called the Zwicky Transient Facility.