New Brilliantly Green Comet Discovered
- Editor OGN Daily
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Meet comet C/2025 F2 (SWAN): a celestial body glowing green as it swings around the sun, currently visible in the early morning hours.
Typically, comets are named for their discoverers, but this one is named after SWAN, a camera aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft, which first detected the celestial visitor.
Comets are bodies of rock, dust and ice left over from the formation of our universe. When they pass close to the sun, comets warm up, giving off a cloud of gas and dust that glows and forms a tail.
“A new comet is always exciting. They appear unexpectedly. They’re quite beautiful. They do tell us a lot, too, about our solar system and about how the planets formed,” says Paul Wiegert, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. “So, you know, it’s sort of a beautiful addition to our springtime skies.”
Since its discovery, the comet has become brighter as it approaches perihelion - the closest point to the sun in its orbit, which will happen on 1 May. If it continues to brighten, it might even become visible to the naked eye. As of now, a pair of binoculars should suffice. Anyone in the Northern Hemisphere can spot the comet shortly before sunrise along the northeast horizon.
Trying to catch a glimpse of this comet could be worth getting up early or staying up late for, if only because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event - C/2025 F2 (SWAN) orbits the sun once every 1.4 million years, so don’t expect it back any time soon!