Russian astronomers photographed the approach of two comets. In this respect informs Institute of Applied Mathematics. Keldysh on the telegram channel.
One of them is C/2022 E3 (ZTF), which passed near Earth on February 2, has a greenish hue and has an orbital period of more than 50,000 years. It looks very bright in the photo and is located in the lower left. The second is C/2022 U2 (ATLAS), with an orbital period of 945 years around the Sun. At the same time, both of these comets are moderately bright and can only be observed with a telescope, but are visible to the naked eye in clear weather during the C/2022 E3 minimum approach.
“Both comet guests are pretty close to Earth – at distances of 0.33 and 0.59 AU, respectively. C/2022 U2 is not much dimmer (~11 magnitude, arrowed) as it is only 2x further away. “The star itself is small and not that active. When the moon leaves, C/2022 U2 can only be seen with relatively large amateur telescopes (from 15-20 cm), while C/2022 E3 (ZTF) can be observed with binoculars for a while.”
Previously, it was known that an enterprise for mining metals on asteroids is AstroForge. lunch Two missions in 2023.