Comet C/2025 R3 · Seestar S30 Pro · 2026-04-18

Comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) is a long-period comet discovered on September 8, 2025 by Yudish Ramanjooloo using the Pan-STARRS2 1.8-meter telescope on Haleakalā, Hawaii, when it appeared as a faint, roughly 19th-20th magnitude object in Andromeda some 3.6 AU from the Sun. It reached perihelion on April 19, 2026. Preliminary orbital calculations suggest its path may be only barely bound, or even hyperbolic, meaning this could be its only pass through the inner solar system before it is flung back into interstellar space. Likely an ancient body dislodged from the outer solar system's Oort Cloud, it drew some media speculation as a possible “great comet,” though its actual peak brightness remained modest. As with most comets, imagers should expect a diffuse coma and faint ion/dust tails that shift night to night, best captured with tracked, stacked exposures.

[Source: Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2025_R3_(PanSTARRS); Space.com; British Astronomical Association]

Annotated Image

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Sky Location

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Image Details

PixInsight Processing

1. Image Integration
2. Drizzle Integration
3. BlurXTerminator (AI deconvolution)
4. Dynamic Crop
5. Histogram Transformation
6. Curves Transformation

Comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) is a long-period comet discovered on September 8, 2025 by Yudish Ramanjooloo using the Pan-STARRS2 1.8-meter telescope on Haleakalā, Hawaii, when it appeared as a faint, roughly 19th-20th magnitude object in Andromeda some 3.6 AU from the Sun. It reached perihelion on April 19, 2026. Preliminary orbital calculations suggest its path may be only barely bound, or even hyperbolic, meaning this could be its only pass through the inner solar system before it is flung back into interstellar space. Likely an ancient body dislodged from the outer solar system's Oort Cloud, it drew some media speculation as a possible “great comet,” though its actual peak brightness remained modest. As with most comets, imagers should expect a diffuse coma and faint ion/dust tails that shift night to night, best captured with tracked, stacked exposures.

[Source: Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2025_R3_(PanSTARRS); Space.com; British Astronomical Association]

Annotated Image

The annotated version is shown above - click it to zoom. Open the annotated image at full resolution.

Sky Location

The chart above shows where this image sits on the night sky. The yellow outline is its field of view, with the picture itself drawn at its true orientation; north is up and east is left. Click the chart to zoom in, and use "open full resolution" for the full-size chart.

Image Details

PixInsight Processing

1. Image Integration
2. Drizzle Integration
3. BlurXTerminator (AI deconvolution)
4. Dynamic Crop
5. Histogram Transformation
6. Curves Transformation