The comet will be closest to Earth between Wednesday and Thursday next week, writes the British newspaper The Guardian. Last spring, astrologers discovered ‘C/2022 E3’ and calculated that the comet takes about 50,000 years to circle the sun.
See images of the comet taken with a telescope here:
In the past thousands of centuries, the comet reached the edge of our solar system. Now it skims past the Earth at a distance of 2.5 light minutes.
The comet can be seen with the naked eye in the Northern Hemisphere, according to the British newspaper. Whether the comet will also be visible in the Netherlands will depend on the weather conditions next week.
Piece of space rock
A comet is a piece of space rock, a celestial body with a diameter of between 1 and 50 kilometers that consists of ice, gas and dust. ‘C/2022 E3’ orbits the sun and heats up as it approaches the sun. This forms the well-known tail.
The gas cloud surrounding the comet can be 100,000 to 1 million kilometers long. A comet that could be seen from the Netherlands in July 2020 caused a lot of attention.
