Astronomers Capture Comet Breaking Up In a Spectacular Fashion

In October 2025, astronomers watched as a long-period comet, C/2025 K1, broke up into several pieces. It produced an amazing orange glow, but the event images were not initially released at particularly high resolution.

Now, NOIRLab has published new images of the event that reveal it in even more spectacular detail.

C/2025 K1 was discovered by the same ATLAS system that spied 3I ATLAS, but where that was a rare interstellar visitor, this comet is a much more common orbiting comet that originates in the Oort Cloud at the far extents of the solar system.

It's an irregular-period comet, meaning that it can't be easily timed out like the most famous comets of the past. Instead, astronomers need to wait for one to arrive, as some unseen gravitational interaction deflects it toward Earth.

Irregular-period comets can provide evidence of the Oort Cloud or other remote parts ...