From Dr. Becky.

Comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) will swing past its closest approach to the Earth on the 19th April on its orbit the Sun, which takes it 160,000 years to get all the way from the Oort cloud on the edge of the Solar System. Because we haven’t seen this before, we don’t have an idea of exactly how bright it will be, we’re just going off what we’ve seen before with other comets. Famously comets are like cats, they have tails and are notoriously unpredictable, so there’ve been predictions that take the brightness of this comet from as faint as Neptune (needing binoculars to see), to as bright as the stars in the constellation of the Cassiopeia, the W, easily seen by the naked eye. The comet can be seen in the west just before sunrise in the constellation of Pegasus – so if you do have a telescope and want to try and spot it now you can do. But fingers crossed this comet gets nice and bright for all of us to see in the sky easily with just our eyes. If it does, I’ll pop a comment below and I’ll post another Short so make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss out!

👩🏽‍💻 I’m Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about black holes, cosmology, dark matter, the early universe, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the biggest unsolved mysteries in astrophysics. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don’t know. If you’ve ever wondered about something in space and couldn’t find an answer online – you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars.

http://drbecky.uk.com