Discovered in July 2025, the comet 3I/ATLAS became very popular during the year as it was only the third confirmed interstellar object to be observed in our Solar System. I was also lucky to see this one beauty too. Here are my occasional observations.
24th December 2025
It was only early in the morning of Christmas Day 2025 that I had the second and final chance to catch the comet, from the Maldivian island of Soneva Fushi. The comet was already high in the constellation Leo and its overall brightness was around magnitude 11. It is captured in the image at 11:00 PM UT (December 23), which was already early Christmas morning in Maldivian time.
The comet can be seen as a small teardrop-shaped spot below the center of the image. Its ion tail is also relatively visible, and has been rotated almost the opposite direction to the dust tail. The bright star Regulus can be seen at the upper right, and above it, a hazy cloud – the dwarf galaxy Leo I.
Christmas Comet 3I/ATLAS – crop
While photographing this unusual Christmas comet, many thoughts came to my mind: The comet escaped from an ancient and probably too distant planetary system from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, i.e. from the direction of the galactic center. Analyses showed that 3I/ATLAS may have a galactic origin in an older region of the Milky Way, perhaps in a part called the thick disk of the galaxy – which is a component of the galaxy containing older stars and material than our Solar System. The comet could thus have been ejected from its parent system billions of years ago. That is, at a time when our system was still in its infancy. And for the following long billions of years it traveled in our direction so that I could only decently capture it on Christmas Eve of last year shortly after midnight, let it wave to me digitally and then bid it an irrevocable farewell, as it continues to sail freely and unfettered as an interstellar wanderer through space and time across the vast emptiness of space.
Christmas Comet 3I/ATLAS – wide view
Christmas Comet 3I/ATLAS – detail
Who knows, maybe this space nomad will one day “settle down”, get caught in the gravitational field of some distant star on its journey. Maybe it will be a star with a planetary system and life on one of the planets. Maybe the observers there will experience a fantastic cometary show thanks to this nomad. And maybe they will ask themselves: How many other civilizations have already observed it on its journey? And what names did they give it? And did it occur to them that they are not alone in the universe? That they are not as isolated, lonely and perhaps even as unique as they might think of themselves? So many thoughts are aroused by the sight of such a small green spot in the middle of what at first glance seems to be a boring picture…
Used Nikon Z6III, Tamron 70-200mm@200mm, f2.8, ISO 4000, 70x30s, tracked on Vixen Polarie U (stacked separately on comet and stars, then blended).
30th November 2025
Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS and So Many Galaxies
On Sunday morning, 30 November 2025, my colleague Josef Kujal and I traveled for clear skies close to Malá Úpa of the Czech Republic (in the Giant Mountains), so we reached the popular interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. In this image, taken with a 200mm telephoto lens for 49 minutes of total integration time, the faint tail and antitail of the comet popped out, as well as many galaxies located in the Virgo constellation. I was able to identify at least 37 of them. While the comet is about 10 magnitude and 287 million kilometers distant, the faintest galaxies in the image are less than 14,5 magnitude bright and hundreds of millions of light-years away. And while the comet is certainly not an alien ship, who might know how many planets with life (or even civilisations) can be located in the distant galaxies captured in the same view. Used Nikon Z6III, Tamron 70-200mm/200mm, f2.8, ISO 2500, 98x30s, tracked on Vixen Polarie U.
Full credit: Petr Horálek/Institute of Physics in Opava, Josef Kujal/Astronomy Society Hradec Králové.
Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS and So Many Galaxies – Annotated
