The Brightest Comet This Spring: C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS)

[00:00:02]Hi everyone! Tonight is a perfect starry night,  so I decided to head to the mountains to observe and photograph the brightest comet this spring  — C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS). And now I’m gonna show you how it all turned out. My name is Alex, and  you’re watching The Night Sky Journey. Let’s go.

[00:00:27]I’m observing in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan,  at around seventeen hundred meters above sea level. The location isn’t perfect,  it’s about Bortle 4. The southern view is good. You can see the center of the Milky Way. But to the north, the view is much worse, because there is a city of over a million people about  50 km away. Still, for a bright comet, that’s not really a problem—especially since it’s visible  in the eastern sky. Comet C/2025 R3 (PANSTARRS) is located in the constellation Pegasus. First, I decided to observe the comet visually.

[00:01:06]It’s easy to find even without GoTo. It’s visible  right in the finder scope. And in the eyepiece, I noticed a very compact coma and a thin  ion tail about half a degree long. That’s what I was able to see with a 130 mm telescope. I got so carried away with visual observing that I almost missed the moment for imaging. The sky  started to brighten very quickly, and I had to switch telescopes and set up my imaging rig. I used an SvBony 70 ED telescope and a ZWO 294 Pro camera. I captured 25  frames, each 30 seconds long.

[00:01:48]Look how much brighter the sky is getting.  Dawn was already breaking. Here’s the constellation Pegasus, and here’s  the spot where the comet was located.

[00:02:13]On the bright side, the snowy mountain peaks  became more visible. Just look at that—beautiful.

[00:02:25]And here’s what I ended up with. I made a short  animation showing the motion over 12 minutes of imaging. The comet was around magnitude 5. Its  long ion tail didn’t even fit into the frame, and you can see how quickly it  fades into the light of dawn.

[00:02:42]That’s why, I only stacked 10 frames, with  a total exposure time of just 5 minutes, and this is the result. Not bad,  considering the challenging conditions.

[00:03:04]So what’s next? The comet will move through the  constellations of Pegasus and Pisces, heading toward the Sun. It should continue to brighten and  may even reach magnitude 2. But at the same time, the viewing conditions will get worse. So, that’s how this observation turned out. I hope you found it interesting. If you  did, make sure to leave a like, drop a comment, and subscribe to the channel. The channel is still pretty small, but it's growing Wishing you clear skies and  successful observations. See you!