It started out as a small dot moving across a sea of stars in a black and white image, and now has evolved into a large, bright object with a glowing tail, courtesy of some of the best telescopes humanity has ever built.
Comet 3I/ATLAS continues to amaze scientists, astronomers and even mere mortals like.
And unsurprisingly, professional comet-watchers have been utilising our best observing engineering to find out as much as they can, while they can.
That's because 3I/ATLAS is merely passing through our Solar System, and won't be around for long.
Comet 3I/ATLAS is one of only three interstellar visitors ever observed by humanity, so understandably we're throwing all of our observing prowess at it, while it's here.
Astronomers have observed the comet with numerous telescope in different wavelengths to learn more about its trajectory and its composition.
It's a primordial piece of the Galaxy, likely more than seven billion years old. That means it's probably about twice as old as our Sun.
Here are some of the best images of 3I/ATLAS captured so far.
We begin with the image that started it all. The view of 3I/ATLAS captured by the ATLAS survey telescope in Chile, when it was discovered.
The animation below is made of multiple images of the comet captured by the ATLAS survey, showing its movement across the sky.
Then in July 2025, the Very Large Telescope, based at the European Southern Observatory's site in the Atacama Desert, Chile, was used to capture the composite below, again showing 3I/ATLAS's movement across the sky.
And here's a closeup of 3/ATLAS captured by the Very Large Telescope at the same time.
Later in July 2025, 3I/ATLAS was photographed by the Gemini North Telescope in Hawai‘i.
The telescope's Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS-N) gave astronomers an early view of the comet’s coma, which is the cloud of gas and dust surrounding its nucleus.
These observations helped characterise the chemical composition of 3I/ATLAS early on.
The Gemini North telescope's Multi-Object Spectrograph also captured this image showing the comet moving across the sky, composed of multiple images taken through red, green and blue filters.
Later in July 2025, the mighty Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of 3I/ATLAS.
Hubble's observations helped astronomers better estimate the size of the comet's nucleus, which is made of dust and ice.
The rather unusual image below of 3I/ATLAS as captured using NASA’s SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) spacecraft, which observed the comet between 7–15 August 2025.
SPHEREx observes in near-infrared, which means it can see elements of objects in space that would be invisible to the human eye.
It was able to analyse light coming from 3I/ATLAS to enable scientists to learn more about the comet's chemical composition.
SPHEREx detected carbon dioxide gas in its coma and found water ice in the nucleus.
Around the same time that SPHEREx was observing 3I/ATLAS, the James Webb Space Telescope captured these images of the comet.
Like SPHEREx, Webb observes in the infrared, meaning it can see things beyond human vision.
The Webb Telescope found 3I/ATLAS is rich in carbon dioxide and also contains water ice, water vapour, carbon monoxide and carbonyl sulfide.
In late August 2025, the Gemini South Telescope at Cerro Pachón in Chile captured these images of 3I/ATLAS.
Gemini South found that the comet is getting more active and its tail is stretching out longer as it makes its way through our Solar System.
The below image was captured using red, green and blue filters, which explains the colourful streaks in the background.
The telescope was focussed on the comet, tracking its movement across the sky, and so the much more distant, more stationary stars appear as long streaks.
A bit of image processing was carried out on the Gemini South images to 'freeze' the background stars and get rid of the streaks, resulting in the final image below.
As the comet disappeared behind the Sun from our perspective, the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter captured his image of 3I/ATLAS in the Martian sky.
NASA's Mars spacecraft also captured images of 3I/ATLAS.
MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) captured images of 3I/ATLAS over a period of 10 days starting 27 September 2025, using its Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) camera.
On 2 October 2025, NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured views of 3I/ATLAS from a distance of 30 million kilometres (19 million miles).
NASA’s Swift Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS during July and August 2025, and the images below were released in October 2025.
The left panel shows observations of the comet in visible light, while the right panel shows observations in ultraviolet.
A study using the observations found the glow of hydroxyl (OH) traces, water vapour, seen escaping from comet 3I/ATLAS.
In mid-November 2025, NASA released a selection of images that had been captured by its fleet of solar-observing spacecraft while 3I/ATLAS was behind the Sun.
The STEREO-A, PUNCH and SOHO missions all captured images of the comet, giving astronomers a vital view of it while it was otherwise un-observable from Earth.
Find out more in our full article on NASA's solar spacecraft views of 3I/ATLAS.
Also in November 2025, we got follow-up observations by the Gemini North telescope, revealing a strange green glow around comet 3I/ATLAS.
In December 2025, the European Space Agency released the below image of 3I/ATLAS captured by its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft.
Juice is on its way to Jupiter, where it will explore three of the planet's icy moons for signs of life, but it managed to capture this image of the interstellar comet on 2 November 2025.
NASA's SPHEREx followed up its August 2025 observations of comet 3I/ATLAS with further observations in December 2025, revealing a sharp increase in brightness and the presence of organic molecules at the comet.
