Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) logo

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

Discovered in March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility’s wide-field survey camera at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) was last visible in the night sky during the Stone Age — about 50,000 years ago.

The researchers say that by studying similar star systems, we can learn more about potentially habitable planets beyond Earth. Ultracool dwarfs are much fainter and dimmer than the sun, so any worlds with liquid water on their surfaces — a crucial ingredient to form and sustain life — would need to be much closer to

Still image from a Firefly video visualization of data from the the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia satellite. The full demo enables users to explore all 1.46 billion stars in the Gaia DR3 dataset in real time. Firefly is a browser-based interactive particle visualization app created by CIERA researchers Alex Gurvich and Aaron Geller, in