Valentine’s Day may be the last chance to see the green comet, which has traveled tens of millions of miles, and humans see it every tens of thousands of years, according to CBS News.
If you’re still looking for the perfect way to celebrate Valentine’s Day, just search the skies for the sparkling green comet that may bid us farewell tonight to begin our journey back to the edge of the solar system.
The comet will pass near the glowing star Aldebaran on February 14 and 15, which means that its researchers will need a camera, binoculars or a telescope to see it, because it will be so faint that it cannot be seen with the naked eye, according to the “Earth Sky” organization, indicating that the best time to monitor it. It is one o’clock in the morning, Washington, D.C. time.
This comet was first discovered last March while it was traveling near Jupiter, and we have been able to see it since last December.
Then, NASA revealed that the comet descended from the farthest region of our solar system, and traveled between 186 billion and 465 billion miles on its journey to orbit the planets.
The green comet had reached its closest distance to Earth, 93 million miles away.
The last time humans saw this comet was 50,000 years ago, according to NASA.
“Most known long-period comets have only been seen once in recorded history because their orbital periods are so long,” says NASA.
She pointed out that “countless long-period, unknown comets have never been seen by human eyes. Some of them have orbits so long that the last time they passed through our solar system, our species did not yet exist.”