Currently, astronomers are aware of more than 3,600 comets, which is a number that is regularly updated as new comets are discovered. These discoveries are made possible by even amateur telescope observations, and professional sky patrol systems regularly reveal new comets.
One such recent discovery is comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), which is shown in the photo. The comet was discovered on March 2, 2022 at the Palomar Observatory in California during a regular survey of the night sky.The series of these discoveries has a specific name: the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). The facility was named after the astronomer Fritz Zwicky, who proposed the concept of "dark matter" during his early career.
At the time of discovery, the comet C/2022 E3 was located in Jupiter's orbital region. Scientists believe that this comet will have a long period of revolutions around the Sun - approximately 50,000 years. Similar to other long-period comets, this object arrived at Earth from the poorly understood outer regions of the solar system. Theorists refer to this area as the "Oort cloud."
On February 1, 2023, C/2022 E3 came as close to Earth as possible, achieving its maximum brightness level. Many people are curious about what a comet is, but it can be simply described as an "icy object," which is a small, compact body that measures a few kilometers in size (or less frequently, tens of kilometers). These objects are like a mass of dirty snow, consisting mostly of ice and not just water.Frozen water is often found in comets, along with frozen ammonia, methane and carbon dioxide. In addition to ice, comets also contain silicate rock, from fine dust to large boulders. There are also metals and even organic compounds in comets.
As the comet approaches the Sun, its ice starts to vaporize. A powerful stream of gases then pulls dust along with the ice. This makes the "icy asteroid" become the nucleus of the comet, which is surrounded by a cloud of gas and dust called the coma. The nucleus and coma make up the "head" of the comet. However, it does not yet have a visible tail.
A coma often forms at a distance of about 10 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. At a distance of between 3 and 4 AU, the comet starts to develop a visible tail, which is a plume of coma material that has been pushed by the pressure of the Sun's light into a direction away from the star.The tail of a comet can extend for tens or even hundreds of millions of kilometers and is so thin that it is essentially a void by terrestrial standards. Astronomers sometimes describe comet tails as "nothingness" because they are so empty. Therefore, the coma and the tail are composed of the evaporated material from the comet's nucleus. And as you know, any material that evaporates will eventually disappear.😁 And if the comet does not break up into pieces and become a meteor shower like is often the case with loose "chunks of snow," and if the solid core of the comet maintains its integrity, then it will become a dormant comet, which differ only from asteroids by their glorious past.💫☄️