Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: The Green Comet)

Why in Broadcast?

A green comet recently appeared to the observers in the Northern hemisphere after 50,000 years. As per NASA this comet will be visible in the Southern Hemisphere in early February.

The comet was given the designation C/2022 E3 (ZTF) in honour of the astronomers who made the initial discovery of it in March 2022.
The astronomers discovered this comet utilising the wide-field survey camera at the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) in the USA.
The comet is estimated to come closest to Earth around February 2

The green glow in this comet is thought to arise from the presence of diatomic carbon, pairs of carbon atoms that are bound together, in the head of the comet.
After approaching the sun in the middle of January, it is now moving away from it, along its own orbit.
The orbit of this comet indicates that it has come from the edge of our solar system, a distant reservoir of comets called the Oort cloud.
With a highly elliptical orbit, the comet will head back to the Oort cloud and will make its next appearance roughly 50,000 years later.

Comets are frozen rocky or gas-filled objects that are remnants of the formation of the solar system.
A comet is made up of four visible parts: the nucleus, the coma, the ion tail, and the dust tail.
Like other celestial bodies comets have orbits too,. They are sometimes pulled in close to the sun because of the sun’s gravity acting on them.
When pulled close to sun’s orbit, they heat up and spew gases and dust into a glowing head. The remains of dust following this burning up, from a distance, look like a trail of light to humans on Earth.

Due to their composition, characteristics and the path they move in, comet tend to leave a light ‘behind them’.
They have often been seen giving out blue or whitish light, or even green.
There are likely billions of comets orbiting our Sun in the Kuiper Belt and even more distant Oort Cloud.
Comets have been widely described as the most primitive solar system materials, preserved at cryogenic temperature and low pressure since the formation of the Sun.

Often termed as ‘the most distant region of our solar system’ and ‘Home of the Comets’, the Oort Cloud is a predicted collection of icy objects farther away than everything else in the solar system.
It is worth mentioning that scientists have yet to observe any object in the Oort Cloud itself, its presence is merely predicted as it fits with observations of comets in the planetary region of the solar system.
The Oort cloud is thought to be a big, spherical region of outer space enveloping our sun, consisting of innumerable small objects, such as comets and asteroids.