NASA spacecraft tracks comet SWAN in incredible 40-day timelapse — and even glimpses interstellar invader 3I/ATLAS (video)
Comets are famous for making brief, dramatic appearances in our skies, but one icy wanderer just received an unprecedented level of attention from one of NASA's newest spacecraft. Comet SWAN moving across the sky in PUNCH images taken from Sept. 11 to 22, 2025. (Image credit: NASA/Southwest Research Institute)The video above stitches together hundreds of PUNCH images taken from Aug. 25 to Oct. 2, showing the comet gliding between two bright objects — Mars at the top and the star Spica in the constellation of Virgo at the bottom. Because the images were not fully processed before being combined, boundaries between individual snaps remain visible as thin black seams, the statement read.Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN) was first spotted in September by Ukrainian amateur astronomer Vladimir Bezugly, who noticed the icy visitor a bright blob...
