【Monica Swinn】

Punxsutawney Phil emerged from his burrow and Monica Swinnsaw his shadow, banishing the green comet from the night sky for 50,000 years.

Okay, okay, that's not what happened. But as the groundhog poked his head out on Feb. 2, a comet dragging a millions-of-miles-long tail through space was in the midst of its closest pass by Earth since the Stone Age, according to NASA astronomers. And it's unlikely to return for another 50 millenia or more.

Either way, folks, it's going to be a long winter.

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The harmless comet, discovered last March in Jupiter's orbit, is a bright ball of ice, dust, and rock. Hundreds of years ago, comets were considered bad omens, much like the darkened silhouette of an overgrown Pennsylvania rodent. Legend holds that Pope Callixtus III excommunicated Halley's Comet in 1456 as an "instrument of the devil," though a Catholic priest disputed that as myth in a 1908 article published in Popular Astronomy.

Scientists today know these glacial objects as ancient relics of the solar system, leftover from the early days when planets around Earth were just forming. In that regard, they're 4.5 billion-year-old time capsules of creation.

The dirty snowball was officially dubbed C/2022 E3 (ZTF) by the Minor Planet Center. It gets its color from carbon in the gas cloud surrounding its head. That emerald hue is only visible with a camera, such as in the photo above snapped by Northwestern University graduate student Imran Sultan, who is studying astrophysics. His images [another below] showcase the comet's greenish orb, stubby dust tail, and long, faint gas tail.

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Astronomers have described the comet as "close" because of the potential to see it with the naked eye or binoculars, depending on weather and light pollution, but space is a big place. It is still about 26 million miles away and not a threat to Earth.

Stargazers should still be able to catch a glimpse of the comet for the next few days by looking toward the North Star with a good pair of binoculars under dark skies, according to the European Space Agency. Without a camera, it won't look green but fuzzy and colorless, the agency said.

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By the weekend, around Feb. 4, people in the Southern Hemisphere should be able to view the flying iceberg, too. Astronomers recommend checking for it on Friday, Feb. 10, when it will be near Mars, an easy celestial guidepost.

The comet isn’t nearly as spectacular as NEOWISE was back in 2020, the brightest comet to come this way since Hale-Bopp in the 1990s. But in an explanatory video, Preston Dyches from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said it was worth watching.

"It's still an awesome opportunity to make a personal connection with an icy visitor from the distant outer solar system," he said.