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After 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar object that originated outside our solar system, another comet named C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) has caught astronomers by surprise as it was recently caught glowing with a golden hue near the Sun.
Unlike 3I/ATLAS, C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) did not originate from outside, but comes from the Oort Cloud, an area that surrounds the entire solar system and is believed to be home to billions of trillions of icy bodies like comets. While the area has never been observed by us, the spherical region does explain the appearance of numerous comets that have an orbital period spanning thousands of years.
C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) is one of the three green comets discovered earlier this year. Among them, C/2025 A6 was the brightest comet to be visible to the naked eye this year, C/2025 R2 Swan was spotted literally one day before getting to its closest point to the Sun.
The comet went under the radar for months because astronomers believed that the gravitational pull of the Sun would disintegrate it. But when it came very close to the Sun at a distance of just 31 million kilometres on October 8, the comet only lost a portion of itself. Not only did C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) survive, it also changed its colour from green to a rare golden hue and had a long tail, which, similar to Comet Lemmon looked like it was affected by the solar wind.
“This comet was not supposed to survive its Oct 9th perihelion. But it did survive, and now it is displaying a red/brown/golden color rarely seen in comets,” amateur astronomer Dan Bartlett told spaceweather.com.
While the majority of comets have white and blue hues because of sunlight reflecting on their icy surfaces, C/2025 K1 (ATLAS)’s golden glow is what makes it interesting. According to David Schleicher, an astronomer working from the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, the golden hue may be because it lacks carbon-bearing molecules like dicarbon and carbon monoxide, but the exact reason still remains unclear.
Talking of survival, some scientists say C/2025 K1 (ATLAS)’s low ratio of gas to dust may be the reason it did not disintegrate even when it was nearest to the Su,n while others believe the comet’s solid core could have helped it remain intact.
Unfortunately, C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) is not visible to the naked eye. It has brightened to a magnitude of 9, which means one can easily spot it using a decent pair of binoculars or a small telescope. The comet will reach its closest point to Earth on November 25 and can be best viewed just before sunrise. It will be visible somewhere in the middle of the constellations of Virgo and Leo.
