A green comet has passed Earth for the first time since the Stone Age

• A green comet called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is approaching Earth, according to NASA.
• The comet last made its way through our solar system 50,000 years ago, according to KXAN.
• The comet will be about 26 million miles from Earth on February 2.

A green comet will pass close to Earth for the first time since the Stone Age in February, and won’t return for another 50,000 years, according to NASAJet Propulsion Laboratory.

The comet, called C/2022 E3 (ZTF), will come within about 26 million miles of Earth on February 2, according to KXAN. February 2nd will be the comet’s closest comet to Earth since the Upper Paleolithic, the time when humans are believed to have left Africa and settled Asia and Europe.

Astronomers first discovered the comet in March, according to a NASA press release.

“A new long-period comet has brightened dramatically and is now sweeping across the northern constellation Corona Borealis in the predawn sky,” NASA he said in a press release on Dec. 24. “It’s still too dim to see without a telescope.”

According to NASA, the brightness of comets “Remarkably unpredictable,” but by February 2, C/2022 E3 (ZTF) could “only be visible to the eye in the dark night sky.” The comet has a “greenish coma, a short broad dust tail, and a long, faint ion tail,” according to NASA.

to me USA Todaythe comet is visible to people in the Northern Hemisphere in the pre-dawn sky with binoculars or a telescope in dark, clear skies throughout the entire month of January.

The outlet reported that experts say the comet likely came from the Oort Cloud, the farthest region in the solar system that contains “a large, thick-walled bubble made of icy chunks of space debris the size of mountains and sometimes larger.”