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Illustration by Christoffer Boman / Chrieon
This is the infamous interstellar visitor from another solar system, Comet 3i/Atlas, the designation from this being the third interstellar comet discovered. It passed through our solar system in late 2025 before heading back off into the galaxy and interstellar space.
If this is an interstellar alien spaceship it is well disguised as a comet!
This is from the morning of November 20, 2025 after it had emerged from behind the Sun in late October and was now positioned high enough for a good look and image through amateur telescopes. The comet shows a faint tail to the right of the cyan-tinted head, all typical of normal solar-system comets. It also shows a faint anti-tail pointing to the left ahead of the comet. The comet was travelling along the ecliptic so dust ejected from the comet was spreading along the ecliptic as well. We were seeing its orbit edge-on making the dust more obvious both ahead and behind the comet.
The comet was in Virgo, near the bright star Porrima which is just out of the field at upper left. The comet itself was about 8th magnitude, much brighter than had been predicted. The field is 2.5º by 1.6º.
Technical:
- This is a stack of 19 x 3 minute exposures for the sky, aligned on the stars, blended with ...
- A stack of 10 of those exposures aligned for the comet, which was moving noticeably (almost a comet diameter) from exposure to exposure, due to its rapid motion through space. I removed the stars from the comet images and aligned just the comet to blend it into the star field..
So the comet comes from that subset of 10 comet-aligned images taken over 30 minutes.
All with the Askar APO120 refractor at its native f/7 for 840mm focal length, and the Canon R5 at ISO 1600. Autoguided on the stars. Taken from home in Alberta on a very fine night, November 19/20, 2025.
Slightly altered colour grading in the tower. Matches the overall tone better. Still just a Photoshop exercise gone slightly wild.
Built for RogueBricks’ “A Tribute to Christopher Nolan” contest.
While building this I might got really inspired by the beautiful soundtrack from Interstellar. So, I noticed some similarities between interstellar journeys and building MOCs. I mean with both you only have a vague plan, you don’t even know exactly what will come from it. The countdown just runs 3 – 2 – 1 – 0! You put the first bricks together and your journey into the infinite depths of creativity begins. Sometimes you might reach a blockade, so you go into your “Hypersleep Pod” and leave the project alone for the time being. But you should always set a wake-up date, because your work has never been idle and will always lead to a good ending, even though the journey, your building project, sometimes seems hopeless.
So don’t give up!
A wide field view of the Lagoon Nebula (M8, Messier 8 or NGC 6523), a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. The Lagoon Nebula is estimated to be between 4000 - 6000 light-years from Earth in the Milky Way Galaxy, and is classified as an emission nebula.
About Emission nebulae:
Emission nebulae are glowing clouds of interstellar gas which have been excited by some nearby energy source, usually a very hot star. The red light seen in this picture is glowing hydrogen captured in the Hydrogen-Alpha (Hα) Infrared wavelength of light at 656nm.
About this image:
A few short 2 minute ISO 3200 exposures, imaged in the rural dark skies of the Waterberg, Limpopo Province, South Africa.
About the Star Colors:
You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.
Gear:
GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope.
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector.
Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.
Orion StarShoot Autoguider.
Celestron AVX Mount.
QHYCCD PoleMaster.
Celestron StarSense.
Canon 60Da DSLR.
Tech:
Guiding in Open PHD 2.6.1.
Image acquisition in Sequence Generator Pro.
Lights/Subs: 15 x 120 sec. ISO 3200 CFA FIT Files.
Calibration Frames:
30 x Bias
30 x Darks
Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,
and finished in Photoshop.
Astrometry Info:
nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1163427#annotated
RA, Dec center: 271.075576212, -24.3734034782 degrees
Orientation: 1.18536473805 deg E of N
Pixel scale: 5.47440202368 arcsec/pixel
Martin
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I could enjoy imaging of the interstellar comet in the weekend.
The comet was drifting fast toward west northwest in Virgo. Dust coma was small and round. Dust tail was short toward east. Greenish ion halo was small and round. Bluish ion tail was not visible clearly at the date, though there looked bluish area to the west of the comet on this frame. North is up, and east is to the left.
Sun distance: 1.774 AU ( 31% distant compared to the perihelion )
Earth distance: 1.925 AU ( 7% distant compared to the minimum )
Equipment: Takahashi FSQ-130ED, F3 Reducer 0.6x, IDAS Clear Filter, and EOS R-SP4II, modified by Seo San on ZWO AM5n Equatorial Mount, autoguided with Fujinon 1:2.8/75mm C-Mount Lens, Pentax x2 Extender, ZWO ASI 174MM-mini, and PHD2 Guiding with comet tracking on.
Exposure: 8 times x 600 seconds, 5 x 240sec, and 7 x 60 seconds at ISO 1,600 and f/3.0, focal length 390mm
Exposure started at 18:46:48 November 29, 2025UTC.
This frame was cropped 1,346 x 898 pixels of the original 6,720 x 4,480 pixels, and this is comparable to a frame taken with a scope of 1,900mm in focal length.
site: 730m above sea level at lat. 37 09 41 North and long. 139 14 54 East in an empty parking of pre-season ski resort in Okutadami in Uonuma Niigata 新潟県魚沼 奥只見. Higher mountains were covered with snow and beautiful, but there was no snow yet at the elevation. Ambient temperature was around -1 degree Celsius or 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind was mild. Atmospheric turbulence was bad, and guide error RMS was around 1.50. Sky was dark, and Sky Quality was 21.53 in SQML. The site was dark toward the east. Local fog interfered at the beginning of imaging session, though weather forecast was nice.
Here is a view of the site at the night:
Interstellar clouds near Rho Ophiuchi (close to IC 4603).
About this image:
A wide field view of a small section of the beautiful interstellar clouds of dust, gas and plasma around Rho Ophiuchi (close to IC 4603).
About the Interstellar cloud colors:
Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. The atoms of gaseous clouds that are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Back-lit dust clouds block light and appear dark. Antares (a red super-giant star, and one of the brighter stars in the night sky), lights up the yellow-red dust clouds. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula. Interstellar clouds are even more colorful than we can see in visible light, emitting light across a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
About the Star Colors:
You will notice that star colors differ from red, orange and yellow, to blue. This is an indication of the temperature of the star's Nuclear Fusion process. This is determined by the size and mass of the star, and the stage of its life cycle. In short, the blue stars are hotter, and the red ones are cooler.
Gear:
GSO 6" f/4 Imaging Newtonian Reflector Telescope.
Baader Mark-III MPCC Coma Corrector.
Astronomik CLS Light Pollution Filter.
Orion StarShoot Autoguider.
Aurora Flatfield Panel.
Celestron AVX Mount.
Celestron StarSense.
Canon 60Da DSLR.
Tech:
Guiding in Open PHD 2.6.1.
Image acquisition in Sequence Generator Pro.
Lights/Subs: 24 x 180 sec. ISO 6400 CFA FIT Files.
Calibration Frames:
50 x Bias
30 x Darks
20 x Flats
Pre-Processing and Linear workflow in PixInsight,
and finished in Photoshop.
Astrometry Info:
nova.astrometry.net/user_images/1187386#annotated
RA, Dec center: 246.597164157, -24.4829072417 degrees
Orientation: 1.25352006052 deg E of N
Pixel scale: 5.89501590632 arcsec/pixel
Basic FITS Header Data:
RA = 246.394201383277 / Object Right Ascension in degrees
DEC = -24.376321106111 / Object Declination in degrees
CRVAL1 = 246.394201383277 / RA at image center in degrees
CRVAL2 = -24.376321106111 / DEC at image center in degrees
OBJCTRA = '16 25 34.608' / Object Right Ascension in hms
OBJCTDEC = '-24 22 34.756' / Object Declination in degrees
AIRMASS = 1.25760852461339 / Average airmass
OBJCTALT= 53.0083763980286 / Altitude of the object
CENTALT = 53.0083763980286 / Altitude of the object
DATE-LOC= '2016-07-03T19:44:33' / Local observation date
DATE-OBS= '2016-07-03T17:44:33' / UTC observation date
Martin
-
[Home Page] [Photography Showcase] [My Free Photo App]
[Flickr Profile] [Facebook] [Twitter] [My Science & Physics Page]
"We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt."
Coopers Dodge RAM 3500 pickup truck from the film Interstellar, ready to go chasing Indian Air Force Drones
What I like about being out on a perfect Sonic Clear night with cool temps and no moon is the composition options that become available in otherwise "boring" areas of the parkway. Adding to the perfection was almost total calm making long exposures in leafy areas possible. I drove several miles looking for the perfect area of road to line up with the Milky Way, and it was extremely dark and remote here coming down Apple Orchard Mountain north of the Peaks of Otter. There wasn't another soul out for quite some time so I was able to shoot anywhere in the road without interference.
I don't care much for photographer generated light painting as it almost always tends to look slightly to extremely induced and misplaced. No matter how dark all you basically need is time and the right camera settings, with the ability to layer mask in Photoshop. Here I did over 4 minutes for the road, and probably should have done a little longer. Then 25 seconds for the sky to avoid streaking and put the 2 together.
I think the night sky is to me one of the strongest testimony to God's existence. Here I am driving down a little country byway and looking off into millions of light years of distance, places that we can only imagine and will never reach in our human form. Many of these light beams originated from stars billions of years burned out but still reaching us, and many more from stars born billions of years ago that have yet to make it. There is a lot more out there than we can even imagine. It certainly did not simply make itself at some point.
An image of one of the newer tunnels built as a link from a new office complex through to the LT Underground Station at Kings Cross/St Pancras Underground Station.
I'm glad I found it in the end (thanks for the heads up Aaron!!!), I really love the way the lights move along the tunnel, creating a different aspect, this adds to the reflected light.
"Interstellar Overdrive" is a psychedelic instrumental composition written by Pink Floyd in 1966, which appears on their 1967 debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_Overdrive
f4/1/50th Second/iso100/Nikon D5100/Sigma 10-20mm lens @ 12mm
Case is running with Dr. Brand.
Movie interstellar
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