Ghostly green Comet ZTF is an astronomical throwback to the last days of the Neanderthals, and it’s not too late to catch a glimpse of it in the northern sky this week.

The last time comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) passed through the inner Solar System, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were still neighbors in parts of Ice Age Europe — and we may be the last members of our species to see it.

Comet ZTF is already starting the outbound leg of its long journey, headed back to the cold, dark outskirts of our Solar System after passing within 26 million miles of Earth on February 1.

As the comet moves away, it’s becoming too dim to see with the unaided eye, but it’s still bright enough to spot with a decent set of binoculars or a pretty basic telescope.

Some of those models show that the comet is caught in the Sun’s gravitational pull, which means it will eventually make another lap around the Solar System.

Another question — which we may never have the answer to — is whether Comet ZTF formed here in our Solar System or whether the Sun plucked it from interstellar space more than 50,000 years ago.