Green comet that will be visible in the night sky next month loses part of its TAIL

This spectacular image shows the moment the tail of a green comet that has not been seen since the Ice Age appears to break off in the night sky.

Astronomers think the space rock, which will be visible for many stargazers on Earth next month, suffered a ‘disconnection’ event caused by turbulent space weather.

This effectively means a weakening in the comet’s tail which makes it look like it is breaking off. 

Experts at SpaceWeather.com say the disruption was likely caused by a stronger-than-usual solar wind released during a recent coronal mass ejection (CME) from our sun.

‘A piece of Comet ZTF’s tail has been pinched off and is being carried away by the solar wind,’ SpaceWeather.com wrote. 

‘CMEs hitting comets can cause magnetic reconnection in comet tails, sometimes ripping them off entirely.’ 

CMEs are large clouds of plasma and magnetic field that erupt from the sun’s upper atmosphere, the corona, before travelling across the solar system and interfering with the atmospheres of planets and other bodies like comets.

SpaceWeather.com added that the comet’s close approach to Earth had coincided with a surge of activity on the sun’s surface, with multiple CMEs sweeping past the space rock this month.

That might not be the end of it, either. 

There are currently eight sunspots traversing the sun’s Earth-facing disk, according to the Met Office’s space weather arm, so more CMEs could yet affect the comet as it comes closer to us. 

That is because these sunspots feature twisted and dense magnetic fields, which give rise to solar flares and CMEs.

The image was taken by Austrian astrophotographer Michael Jäger, who drove from 500 miles (800km) from his home to Bavaria in Germany to get a clear view of the night sky.

He shared his picture of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) on Twitter.

The ‘once-in-a-generation’ space rock was discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at the Palomar Observatory in California in March last year while inside Jupiter’s orbit.

In terms of passing our planet, it won’t be in any way close. In fact, the nearest it will come to Earth is 26.4 million miles (42.5 million kilometres) on February 2. 

But astronomers don’t expect Comet C/2022 E3 to visit Earth again for at least another 50,000 years, having last been visible during the Ice Age.

Comets are notoriously unpredictable, but if this one continues its current trend in brightness it should be easy to spot with binoculars or a telescope. 

Better still, it may even be visible to the naked eye if skies are dark towards the end of the month.

If that is the case it will be the first comet that can be seen with the unaided eye since NEOWISE raced past Earth in 2020, although it won’t be anywhere near as spectacular.

NEOWISE left a long, misty tail, while E3 is likely to appear as a grey streak or smudge in the night sky.

However, neither match the brightness of Hale-Bopp, which was widely seen in 1997.

Observers in the Northern Hemisphere will find the comet in the morning sky, as it moves swiftly from the northeast to northwest and passes between the Little and Big Dippers during January.

Comets are made up of rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds, and have orbits that take them much further out of the solar system than other space rocks. 

Their tails are made of vaporised material and dust released by the comet as it heats up closer to the sun. 

It is this that makes them so spectacular to photograph, because although the space rock itself is usually no more than a few miles wide, its tail can sometimes stretch out for hundreds of thousands of miles.