Rare comet C/2025 R3 PANSTARRS visible in northern hemisphere now
Heads up, stargazers: the rare comet C/2025 R3 PANSTARRS is visible in the northern hemisphere.
This icy traveler from the distant Oort Cloud is not expected to return for another 170,000 years, so this is truly a once-in-a-lifetime sight.
If you've got a clear night, you can spot it as a faint, fuzzy patch through binoculars before it returns in 170,000 years.
Scientists call comet time capsule
C/2025 R3 PANSTARRS isn't just cool to look at; it's basically a time capsule from when our Solar System was forming.
Scientists think comets like this might have delivered some of life's building blocks to Earth billions of years ago.
As Perth Observatory's Matt Woods puts it, this comet is a "frozen archive of cosmic history," and right now observers in the northern hemisphere with binoculars can catch a glimpse before it heads back into deep space.