A striking "green comet" about the size of a small city is lighting up the night sky as it nears Earth next week. Experts predict the hefty iceball may soon be permanently ejected from the solar system, dooming it to drift through interstellar space — like the "alien" comet 3I/ATLAS.
The new comet, dubbed C/2024 E1 (Wierzchoś), was discovered in March 2024 by Polish astronomer Kacper Wierzchoś, who spotted the icy object sailing toward us with a 4.9-foot (1.5 meter) telescope at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona. The comet has since been observed by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which detected large amounts of carbon dioxide in its coma — the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds the comet's icy shell.
