Strange Universe: Orange Mars and Green Comet 2/19/23

Comet ZTF has gotten a lot of media headlines, talking about the great green comet. But the word in astronomy circles is very different. So if you haven’t seen it, and I’m willing to bet that you haven’t, don’t feel bad. In truth, the comet only looks green in long exposure astrophotography. If you managed to find it in the night sky through binoculars, which is pretty hard even for backyard astronomers, it looks like a faint, gray, fuzzy ball with no tail. And a comet with no tail is hardly spectacular as a visual object.