{"id":774801,"date":"2026-05-05T11:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/774801\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:47:13","slug":"rare-comet-appears-over-new-zealand-australia-and-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/774801\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare Comet Appears Over New Zealand, Australia and South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

The night skies above the Southern Hemisphere will host a rare visitor over the next two weeks. A glowing blue-green comet, believed to have originated in an icy region at the edge of the solar system, will swing over New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.<\/p>\n

The comet \u2014 known as C\/2025 R3 PANSTARRS \u2014 was discovered in 2025 and has slowly been making its journey past Earth. Last month, it was visible in the Northern Hemisphere for several weeks. Now, it\u2019s time for stargazers in the Southern Hemisphere to see it. <\/p>\n

The comet will be visible for about two weeks through a telescope, binoculars or camera lens before it decreases in brightness and fades away for tens of thousands of years.<\/p>\n

Josh Aoraki, resident astronomer at Te Whatu Stardome in Auckland, New Zealand, said comets fall into one of two categories: short-period and long-period. The former is any comet that takes under 200 years to orbit the sun, like Halley\u2019s comet (which will return in 2061<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Long-period comets, like C\/2025 R3 PANSTARRS, take many more years to complete their journey. In this case, the comet may not return for another 170,000 years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever we spot them, it\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve seen them, and it\u2019s also the only time that we will see them in our lifetimes,\u201d Mr. Aoraki said.<\/p>\n

Although long-period comets are discovered each year, most can only be seen with specialized space telescopes, Mr. Aoraki said. Just a handful are visible through amateur telescopes and even fewer to the naked eye.<\/p>\n

Astronomers believe the comet originated in a region called the Oort cloud, which lies beyond Pluto<\/a> at the edge of the solar system and is made up of icy, comet-like objects. Many long-period comets come from this part of space.<\/p>\n

For the past three nights, John Drummond, director of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand\u2019s comet section, has been watching the comet travel overhead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoy looking at comets because they\u2019re a moving body in a fairly static universe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The best way to see the comet is to get away from any light pollution on a clear night and look to the west, near the constellation of Orion, Mr. Drummond said.<\/p>\n

Warwick Anderson, a Canberra Astronomical Society committee member said the comet \u201cwill appear as a gray, fuzzy smudge in the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yudish Ramanjooloo, a planetary defense junior researcher at the Pan-STARRS project at the University of Hawaii\u2019s Institute for Astronomy, was the first to spot the comet in September 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe mostly deal with asteroids and when we see something that\u2019s unusual, it\u2019s always a little exciting,\u201d he said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The jumble of numbers and letters in the comet\u2019s name is a code, indicating what type of comet it is, when it was discovered and by whom, Mr. Ramanjooloo said.<\/p>\n

Comets are <\/strong>essentially some of the \u201cprimordial building blocks\u201d of the solar system, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey give us clues on what our solar system was like when they were first formed, and we can learn how that\u2019s evolved over time,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The night skies above the Southern Hemisphere will host a rare visitor over the next two weeks. A…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":774802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[4740,15875,917,23133,317525,159,161,2241,35673,317524,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-774801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-australia","tag-comets","tag-earth","tag-new-zealand","tag-pluto-dwarf-planet","tag-science","tag-solar-system","tag-south-africa","tag-space-and-astronomy","tag-telescopes-and-observatories","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116521811845511238","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}