In October, a newly discovered comet will streak so close to Earth that people may be able to make out its heavenly fireworks with the naked eye — a spectacle that won’t happen again for more than a millennium, according to Space.com, so it’s worth trying to spot it.
This icy interstellar visitor, now given the clunky name of C/2025 R2 (SWAN), is estimated to make its closest approach to Earth at a mere 25.10 million miles away on around October 21, Space.com reports. It’s visible to people with telescopes and binoculars in the Southern Hemisphere, but it may become bright enough to see unaided as its trajectory brings it into view in the Northern Hemisphere.
“If the comet continues to behave as it does now, we will have a great comet in October, also in the Northern Hemisphere,” Gerald Rhemann, an astrophotographer, told Universe Today.
The comet came to public attention when Ukrainian amateur astronomer Vladimir Bezugly spotted the dusty bright ball this month while examining images from the Solar Wind Anisotropies (SWAN) camera that’s on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a spacecraft whose mission is to observe the Sun.
Images show a ball of light shooting through the starry blackness of space, with a characteristic comet tail streaking behind it.
“This is a milestone, the 20th official SWAN comet so far,” Bezugly told Universe Today in an interview. “It was an easy comet for detection due to sufficient brightness in the UV (ultraviolet) band and location in the SWAN images, exactly in its center.”
Other astronomers calculated its orbit around the Sun and pegged it at 1,400 years, Space.com reports, meaning this is your only chance to see this rare phenomenon unless you plan to live a very long time.
Astronomers will no doubt try to capture images and data from the comet as it makes it way near us; comets are an object of fascination because they may hold clues to questions about the formation of the Solar System — and even perhaps whether they carried the seeds of life to places like Earth.
The comet will be traveling through several constellations such as Sagittarius, Scorpius and Libra in October, so be prepared to look up with wonder.
More on comets: Unfortunate Comet Flies Too Close to the Sun, Disintegrates and Becomes a Ghost