- Eleven months since its discovery, comet C/2022 E3, last seen 48,000 years ago, will be the closest it has been to planet Earth on Wednesday and Thursday since the Ice Age.
- The comet, described as having a “brighter greenish coma, short broad dust tail, and long faint ion tail stretching across a 2.5 degree wide field-of-view,” reached its perihelion, or the point at which it’s closest to the Sun, on Jan. 12 and is expected to reach its perigee, the point closest to Earth, on Feb. 1, NASA reported.
- It has had people hunting out since mid-January in hopes of getting a mere glance at the “once-in-a-civilization” comet.
