Rare comet to flash through New Zealand skies – before it disappears for 170,000 years

A comet formed on the edges of the solar system will grace southern skies over the next fortnight, giving viewers a rare chance to glimpse it before it disappears from view for another 170,000 years.The comet – known as C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS – had been travelling through the northern hemisphere but has “swung around the sun” and is now visible in the south, said Josh Aoraki, an astronomer at Te Whatu Stardome in Auckland, New Zealand.The comet is fairly bright, but people would need binoculars, a telescope or a camera to see it, Aoraki said.“It’s not naked-eye brightness … [but] this one is a decently easy one to photograph, which is always nice,” he said.The comet will gradually decrease in brightness over the next two weeks, and interested viewers in New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and the Pacific should aim to capture it as soon as possible, Aoraki said.Those wishing to see the comet should find a clear, unobstructed view of the western horizon just after sunset, when the comet is still low in the sky. It will be most visible in the hour after the sun goes down.For those who do manage to spy it, they can expect to see a blue-green orb – a temporary gas around the nucleus, called a coma – and a smudgy tail.“You get the coma and the tail looking like a little fuzzy meteor in the sky.”C/2025 R3 PanSTARRS originates in the Oort Cloud – a vast shell of icy comet-like objects surrounding the distant-most edges of our solar system. It was discovered in 2025 and is a long-period comet that takes roughly 170,000 years to orbit the sun – that’s if it doesn’t break apart first.“It’s really hard to predict the trajectory of them, because as they do go around the sun, they’re losing mass, and that can change the path,” Aoraki said.“So it could be back in that amount of time, but it also could be ejected from the solar system entirely.”