Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2026

MAY-JUNE 2026 Hubble unexpectedly catches comet breaking up by NASA/ESA Bethany Downer C omet K1, whose full name is Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) — not to be confused with inter- stellar comet 3I/ATLAS — was not the original target of a recent Hub- ble study. “Sometimes the best sci- ence happens by accident,” said co-investigator John Noonan, a re- search professor in the Department T he diagram above shows the path the long-period comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), or K1 for short, took as it swung past the Sun and began its journey out of the Solar System. On November 10, 2025, Hubble captured the inset image of the fragmenting comet. Hubble took this image just a month after perihelion, during which a comet experiences its most intense heating and stress. Just past perihelion is when some long-period comets like K1 tend to fall apart. K1’s peri- helion was inside Mercury’s orbit, about one-third the distance of the Earth from the Sun. [NASA, ESA, R. Crawford (STScI)]