This object came a very long way, indeed.
For the very first time since the Stone Age, a ball of ice named C/2022 E3 (ZTF) will be going near the Earth. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the celestial object is estimated to be about 26 million miles from Earth on February 2.
Astronomers believe that this distance is the closest the comet will be to the Earth in 50,000 years. While that distance may seem too far, the icy comet is burning so bright that there is a possibility that we could see it in the night sky.
NASA states that while comets are generally unpredictable, this particular one has a big chance of being easily spotted by binoculars."[...]If this one continues its current trend in brightness, it'll be easy to spot with binoculars, and it's just possible it could become visible to the unaided eye under dark skies," the organization wrote in an update last year.
The moniker “green comet” comes from its description. The space object is said to have a "greenish coma, short broad dust tail, and long faint ion tail." The color is linked to dicarbon, a molecule that emits the color as the sunlight decays it.
Image credit: Mike Hankey