New photos reveal that a recently discovered comet called ‘The Other ATLAS’ has transformed into a stunning golden ribbon after surviving its approach to the Sun. This journey was what many experts believed would be the comet’s destiny.
The comet, called C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), was discovered in May by astronomers with the Asteroid Earth Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which uses telescopes in Hawaii, Chile and South Africa to scan the night sky for moving objects. This object has been relatively unknown until now, largely because of the recent hype surrounding the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which was discovered by ATLAS astronomers in early July, and Comet Lemmon, which has been clearly visible in the night sky in recent weeks.
C/2025 K1 made its closest approach to the Sun, or perihelion, on October 8, bringing it within 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) of our home star. This is about four times closer than the 3I/ATLAS management at perihelion on October 29th. Due to the intense gravitational force of this close encounter, many experts believed that C/2025 K1 would be torn apart. spaceweather.com.
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On October 29, as 3I/ATLAS reached perihelion, astrophotographer Dan Bartlett took a stunning shot of C/2025 K1 from June Lake in California. The image shows a comet with a distinctive golden glow and a long tail that appears to have been exposed to solar wind, similar to Comet Lemmon, which recently had its tail torn off.
“This comet was not supposed to survive perihelion on October 8,” Bartlett told Spaceweather.com. “But it survived and now exhibits red/brown/gold colors rarely seen in comets.” The same distinctive hue was observed by at least two other photographers in California and Arizona.
Comets usually appear white because the sunlight they reflect contains all wavelengths of visible light. But if certain chemicals are present in the cloud of ice, gas, and dust that surrounds a comet (known as a coma), they can absorb certain wavelengths of light, causing the comet to glow in different shades.
Several notable comets have turned green in recent years, such as Comet Nishimura, the explosive “devil’s comet” 12P/Pons-Brooks, and the aptly named “green comet” C/2022 E3, due to the presence of either dicarbon or cyanide in their respective coma. Recent observations suggest that some comets can turn blue if their coma contains carbon monoxide or ammonia, and this may be happening in 3I/ATLAS as well. However, C/2025 K1 gold is even rarer.
Astronomer David Schleicher, who studies C/2025 K1 at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, wrote in a recent blog post that the comet is surprisingly devoid of carbon-containing molecules such as dicarbon, carbon monoxide, and cyanide. To date, only two other known comets have fewer of these molecules, he writes.
This loss of carbon-containing molecules is the most likely cause of the comet’s golden color, but “the exact reason is unknown,” Spaceweather.com representatives wrote. However, the researchers added that it could also be related to recent solar flights and the relatively low ratio of gas to dust.
C/2025 K1 currently has an apparent magnitude of 9 and is as bright as 3I/ATLAS after an unexpected brightening event that occurred during the Sun’s approach. Both objects are too faint to see with the naked eye, but can be seen with a decent telescope or stargazing binoculars.
If you want to see it for yourself, C/2025 K1 will be located between the constellations Virgo and Leo in the eastern sky and will be most clearly visible shortly before sunrise, according to Spaceweather.com. It is scheduled to make its closest approach to Earth on November 25th, and is likely to remain visible until early December.
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