Comet C/2022 E3 is flying past Earth next week for the first time in 50,000 years! It will most visible around February 1st, 2023 with the naked eye from Earth.

Over the years thousands of comets fly past Earth, many of them last for months and can be seen with their beautiful tails shining behind them. Many of them fly away for 3-15 years and then come back to Earth. These comets are called Periodic comets or short-period comets and can be seen quite often in a lifetime. But some comets take longer to orbit the sun and only come close to Earth every thousand years these are called 

Long-period comets. Comets are one of the first things to appear in our solar system, made of primarily rock and ice and often called “Dirty snowballs” they have been orbiting our sun for billions of years.  

Comet C/2022 E3 has been on an interesting path ever since it was created. Every 50,000 years it comes close to the Earth and the sun in its orbit, but then spends the rest of its orbit heading away from the sun in a place far beyond the orbit of Pluto, every farther than the furthest man-made probe Voyager 1! 

These comets orbit in a place called the Oort Cloud which is at the very edge of our solar system. The Oort Cloud is a large mysterious ring that surrounds our solar system. Out here there is nothing but dust, ice, rock, and comets. It is believed millions of ghostly comets orbit here, only coming close to the sun every billions of years. 

The Oort cloud is 2 light years away from Earth, so they are not anywhere close to visiting it. It's more of a halfway point from us to the nearest star Alpha Centauri which is four lightyears away from us. 

C/2022 E3 is a recent discovery, it was discovered just last year as it rushed towards Earth. And many long- period comets like C/2022 E3 have been discovered this way too. We have trouble identifying all of the comets in the Oort Cloud because it's just too far away and the comets are too small to see by telescope. Even with our most advanced space telescope James Webb has trouble identifying them. 

So for now we will just watch in mystery and wonder as these ancient, interstellar, snowballs fly past.