Comet Panstarrs C/2025R3 and The Witch Head Nebula: View from Namibia
Astrophotographer Dominique Dierick: "Bright tail, nearly 10 degrees in my image, but it continued for at least another 10 degrees or more. Imaged remote in Namibia from home."
C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) is a hyperbolic Oort cloud comet. It passed perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on April 19, 2026, when it was 0.499 astronomical units (AU) (75 million kilometers) from the Sun. The comet was discovered by PanSTARRS in images obtained on September 8, 2025.
The Witch Head Nebula (IC 2118) is an extremely faint reflection nebula located in the Eridanus (The River) constellation about 800 light-years away. Astronomers are still learning about this molecular cloud, but research indicates that the wind-swept appearance may have formed from stellar wind of nearby, highly luminous stars.
The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) located at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii, USA, consists of astronomical cameras, telescopes and a computing facility that is surveying the sky for moving or variable objects on a continual basis, and also producing accurate astrometry and photometry of already-detected objects. The Pan-STARRS Project is a collaboration between the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Maui High Performance Computing Center and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). The NASA Near Earth Object Observation Program is the main funder for the operation of the Pan-STARRS telescopes.
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the northeast, approximating a quadripoint, Zimbabwe lies less than 200 meters (660 feet) away along the Zambezi River near Kazungula, Zambia.
Image Credit: Dominique Dierick (Belgium)
Capture Location: Namibia
Date: May 6, 2026
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