Comet 3i/Atlas does not look much but it is very special as it's an interstellar visitor!
~ Comet 3i/Atlas next to Galaxy PGC 1318186 at closet approached to Earth ~
~ Comet 3i/Atlas next to Galaxy PGC 1318186 at closet approached to Earth ~
Screenshot Stellarium App of Comet during imaging ~ Comet 3i/Atlas next to Galaxy PGC 1318186 at closet approached to Earth ~
On 20th December 2025 in the Constellation of Leo (The Lion)
I was very excited to get up this morning at 2.30 am to try and capture a picture of this very intriguing comet! The weather was very humid with a bit of light cloud cover so the conditions were not the best.
But this was my one and only chance to get a photo of this interstellar object at its closest approach to Earth and I was going to do my best to catch it :-)
I used the little Seestar S50 telescope and had no problem finding the comet, but the telescope had a bit of trouble capturing and stacking the images in the wind. I finally got about 5 minutes of images between 3.20am and 3.40am, that’s when the sky started to lighten. (It’s our summer solstice in just two days times)
Oh my…this comet is moving extremely fast through the star field, It was a bit confusing as there were two smudges (objects) close together on my images?
When I checked the Stellarium App it showed that Comet 3i/Atlas was right next to this very faint galaxy called PGC 1318186.
I could not find out much about this galaxy only that its co-ordinates matched where Comet 3i/Atlas was and its magnitude is 17.38.
* Position of Comet when taking these images * From The Sky live tracker:
Comet 3i/ATLAS was in the constellation of Leo, at a distance of 269,111,198.1 kilometers from Earth. The current Right Ascension is 10h 52m 41s and the Declination is +06° 30' 57” (apparent coordinates). Magnitude 16.69.
(Now that’s very faint)
Tracking Comet 3i/Atlas: The Sky live tracker at:
https://theskylive.com/c2025n1-tracker
PGC 1318186 RA/Dec 10h 45m 09.8s +07’ 09’ 05.5”
https://in-the-sky.org/data/catalogue.php?cat=PGC
On 20th December 2025 in the Constellation of Leo (The Lion)
I was very excited to get up this morning at 2.30 am to try and capture a picture of this very intriguing comet! The weather was very humid with a bit of light cloud cover so the conditions were not the best.
But this was my one and only chance to get a photo of this interstellar object at its closest approach to Earth and I was going to do my best to catch it :-)
I used the little Seestar S50 telescope and had no problem finding the comet, but the telescope had a bit of trouble capturing and stacking the images in the wind. I finally got about 5 minutes of images between 3.20am and 3.40am, that’s when the sky started to lighten. (It’s our summer solstice in just two days times)
Oh my…this comet is moving extremely fast through the star field, It was a bit confusing as there were two smudges (objects) close together on my images?
When I checked the Stellarium App it showed that Comet 3i/Atlas was right next to this very faint galaxy called PGC 1318186.
I could not find out much about this galaxy only that its co-ordinates matched where Comet 3i/Atlas was and its magnitude is 17.38.
* Position of Comet when taking these images * From The Sky live tracker:
Comet 3i/ATLAS was in the constellation of Leo, at a distance of 269,111,198.1 kilometers from Earth. The current Right Ascension is 10h 52m 41s and the Declination is +06° 30' 57” (apparent coordinates). Magnitude 16.69.
(Now that’s very faint)
Tracking Comet 3i/Atlas: The Sky live tracker at:
https://theskylive.com/c2025n1-tracker
PGC 1318186 RA/Dec 10h 45m 09.8s +07’ 09’ 05.5”
https://in-the-sky.org/data/catalogue.php?cat=PGC
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