Comet C2022-E3 ZTF and Mars

Recently the vicinity of Earth was visited by a “Dirty Snowball” otherwise known at Comet C2022-E3 ZTF. This comet was discovered a year ago. Its passage was billed as a once in a lifetime opportunity.   Well like many comets, it proved to be a bit of a disappointment. None the less, it presented an opportunity to observe and perhaps take a picture.

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Comet C2022-E3 ZTF was a long-period comet from the Oort cloud that was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) on 2 March 2022. The comet had a bright green glow around its nucleus, due to the effect of sunlight on diatomic carbon and cyanogen. The comet’s systematic designation starts with C to indicate that it is not a periodic comet, and “2022 E3” means that it was the third comet to be discovered in the first half of March 2022.

The comet nucleus was estimated to be about a kilometer in size, rotating every 8.5 to 8.7 hours.  It’s tails of dust and gas extended for millions of kilometers and, during January 2023, an anti-tail was also visible.

The comet reached its perihelion on 12 January 2023, at a distance of 1.11 AU (166 million km; 103 million mi), and the closest approach to Earth was on 1 February 2023, at a distance of 0.28 AU (42 million km; 26 million mi). The comet reached magnitude 5 and was visible with the naked eye under moonless dark skies.

Comet C2022-E3 ZTF has now dimmed and passed out of view to me. When it was observable, I was experiencing the coldest cloudiest and coldest of winter weather here in Calgary.  When it crossed across the north from West to East, it was easily observable from my back deck, and I was able to locate it with my Camera and cell phone on a tripod.  To capture it with my telescope was more of a challenge.  I did eventually do this later when the comet was in Taurus and flying past Mars, during the latter half of February 2023.  This comet moved very fast, so fast that the movement could be observed against the background stars in a matter of minutes.

I do have an image of Comet C2022-E3 ZTF to share of mine, not nearly as impressive as this one above of the Comet and Mars. It would have been taken a few hours before the one I captured which is shown as the feature image of this post.  

Visit the Comet Portfolios on this site.