Following its passage behind the Sun in autumn 2025, interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is now visible in the winter night sky to those with a telescope.
The emergence of 3I/ATLAS into the night sky means that even amateur astronomers can get a good look at it.
Many are finding smart telescopes are a great way to instantly hone in on and capture beautiful images of the comet.
More on 3I/ATLAS
3I/ATLAS is an interstellar comet, meaning it originated beyond our Solar System, and is temporarily passing through our cosmic environs.
It's been imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, NASA solar missions, and even Mars spacecraft and a European probe on its way to Jupiter.
But this more terrestrial capture of comet 3I/ATLAS comes courtesy of Osama Fathi, a photographer who photographed the interstellar comet over Egypt's Black Desert.
"From the heart of Egypt’s Black Desert, where volcanic hills rise like silent sentinels and acacia trees stand alone against the night, an object from another star system drifts through our sky: interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS," says Fathi.
"In this frame, the faint green glow of 3I/ATLAS slips between the desert trees, a visitor older than our Sun, passing through the Solar System only once before returning to interstellar space.
"The comet’s subtle cyan hue comes from faint cyanide radical gas emission in its coma; a chemical fingerprint shared with distant comets but arriving here from a planetary system we will never see."
How to photograph 3I/ATLAS
If you want to capture an image of 3I/ATLAS yourself, you can read our guide on how to photograph a comet, or take advice straight from Fathi himself!
"This image was captured using an astro-modified Nikon Z6 camera paired with a RedCat telescope lens," he says, "pushed to 3× optical zoom to achieve an effective focal length of about 750mm. That was enough to isolate this rare traveler against the desert horizon.
"To reveal the comet’s structure and faint gas halo, the scene was stacked from 60 exposures of 60 seconds at ISO 1500, then 60 exposures of 30 seconds.
"These long integrations allowed the comet’s delicate coma and motion against the background stars to emerge clearly, even under the extremely dark Saharan skies.
"This frame was planned and captured from the Black Desert in Egypt on the night of 29 November 2025.
"I began the session around 03:00 in complete desert silence. No city lights, just the dark silhouettes of the trees and the pure sky above.
"In that still, beautiful scene, 3I/ATLAS appeared in the field of view: a faint visitor from another star system, crossing our sky once in a lifetime while the desert slept."
See more of Fathi's work via his Instagram profile @osama.fathi.nsw.
Send us your astrophotos by emailing contactus@skyatnightmagazine.com
