Photo of the Month (February 2025 Edition): the Great Comet of 2025

Having been born a few years after Halley’s last appearance, I never imagined I would see a comet before turning 70. Then, in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic—forty years before Halley’s next visit—Neowise appeared. In a dramatic twist of fate, it was easily visible in the Northern Hemisphere, but by the time it reached us south of the equator, it had already faded significantly. One night, I slipped away to try and photograph it. The experience was both thrilling and disappointing. In the end, I was left with other pictures of the starry sky from that night, while Neowise, too faint for a good shot, remained only in my memory.

Believing that the next comet I’d have the chance to see would be Halley, in the distant winter of 2061, I was surprised once again. Starting in late September 2024, the “Comet of the Century” lit up the skies over Brazil. This time, by sheer coincidence, I was in the Northern Hemisphere, where I managed to see it faintly for just one night. Hoping for more chances to photograph the Comet of the Century in the following nights, I was thwarted by the weather and had to settle for the one photo I managed to take on that first and only night. Once again, reality failed to meet expectations.

Once more, thinking I’d have to wait until Halley’s return—since there wouldn’t be another “comet of the century”—the news of the discovery of C/2024 G3 (ATLAS), the “Great Comet of 2025,” almost passed me by unnoticed. Being best seen from the Southern Hemisphere, it didn’t receive the same media attention as Neowise, perhaps just another cruel irony of fate. With its shine overlooked by the press, the Great Comet of 2025 turned out to be the most beautiful sighting of the century so far. And, unfortunately, very few people stopped to witness it.

I almost missed it myself! I first heard about it in December 2024 when its magnitude started increasing, becoming nearly visible at dawn in the South. That information got lost somewhere in the black hole of my notes, and I never heard about the comet again—until January 19, just three nights before it was to disappear forever into the depths of the Universe, when I saw a photo of it—and panicked.

I wasn’t prepared to photograph it on those nights, and the cloudy weather didn’t help. With an uninspiring landscape surrounding me, I spent the entire next afternoon poring over satellite images, searching for a lone tree, an abandoned structure, or anything to break the endless sea of soybean fields stretching to the twilight horizon.

I found a relatively accessible spot, away from urban light pollution, where two small trees had somehow survived the agribusiness-induced ecocide. But upon arriving, I saw that the tall soybean crop almost completely obscured them. And the clouds covered the comet.

After just over an hour of waiting, a glow, different from a star, peeked through the clouds. The light dropped lower on the horizon, behind thick layers of clouds, gradually revealing more of the comet’s tail. Disappointed by the landscape and the endless soy fields, I abandoned my plan for a landscape composition and used a telephoto lens to make a portrait of the beautiful comet—already in the process of disintegration.