What was your skywatching spotlight of 2025? A comet changing into seen to the bare eye? Mars disappearing behind the moon? Or did you glimpse a “blood moon” whole lunar eclipse and see the northern lights ultimately?
Here is what occurred within the skies in 2025, in spectacular photographs.
1. A Wolf Moon “eats” Mars
Learn extra: Mars hides behind the complete Wolf Moon in attractive pictures from world wide
2. A “nice comet” seems
For those who do not keep in mind 2025’s “nice comet,” it is most likely since you’re within the Northern Hemisphere. Again in mid- to late January, Comet 2024 G3 (ATLAS) made an in depth cross of the solar earlier than sprouting a brilliant, structured tail that delighted astrophotographers south of the equator. The comet even grew to become brilliant sufficient to be seen within the daytime with the bare eye.
Learn extra: Why Comet G3 (ATLAS) can be ‘remembered because the Nice Comet of 2025’ (pictures)
3. “Blue Ghost” lands on the moon
After launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in January, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace efficiently landed its Blue Ghost spacecraft on the moon’s 300-mile-wide (500 kilometers) Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”) basin in early March, changing into the second personal spacecraft ever to soft-land on the moon. The corporate shared a spectacular video displaying Blue Ghost’s descent and spectacular touchdown, full with its personal lengthy lunar shadow.
Learn extra: Contact down on the moon with personal Blue Ghost lander on this wonderful video
4. A star path is seen from orbit
Between September 2024 and April 2025, NASA astronaut Don Pettit — famed for his pioneering work in astrophotography from orbit — performed his third mission on the Worldwide Area Station. In collaboration with astrophotographer Babak Tafreshi of The World at Night time on the bottom, Pettit took the artwork kind to a different stage, capturing dozens of mesmerizing star trails.
Learn extra: Astronaut takes a mind-bending journey over Earth beneath star trails: Area picture of the day
5. A “blood moon” whole lunar eclipse captivates skywatchers
Learn extra: Complete lunar eclipse March 2025: Finest pictures of the “Blood Worm Moon”
6. Vapor tracers seem inside auroras
Simply as an aurora substorm erupted, two NASA sounding rockets poised for launch at Alaska’s Poker Flat Analysis Vary out of the blue went skyward, releasing colourful vapor tracers throughout the aurora borealis, or northern lights. As a part of the AWESOME mission, vapor tracers had been imaged utilizing cameras throughout northern Alaska to trace winds, particle flows and magnetic modifications through the outburst.
Learn extra: NASA launches rockets into auroras, creating breathtaking lights in Alaskan skies (pictures)
7. Perseids blast by way of moonlight
It could be the Northern Hemisphere’s favourite annual meteor bathe, however the Perseids weren’t a traditional in 2025, as they had been marred by an 84%-illuminated crescent moon. Nonetheless, earlier than the height evening of the Perseid meteor bathe on Aug. 12-13, there was a brief window of darkness, throughout which just a few brilliant meteors had been seen within the predawn hours. About 10 days earlier than the height evening, NASA photographer Invoice Ingalls took this lengthy publicity of a Perseid meteor in Spruce Knob, West Virginia.
Learn extra: Perseid meteor bathe 2025 outshines moon to placed on a spectacular present (pictures)
8. An interstellar comet grows a tail
For comet hunters, 2025 was a landmark 12 months, primarily as a result of it noticed the invention of the third interstellar object ever to go to our photo voltaic system. Comet 3I/ATLAS, because it got here to be identified, adopted within the wake of ‘Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1) in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. In late August, astronomers utilizing the Gemini South telescope in Chile glimpsed the tail of the interstellar interloper.
Learn extra: Scientists seize interstellar invader comet 3I/ATLAS rising a tail
9. Photo voltaic most continues to ship
Following an unimaginable 12 months in 2024, it was doubtless that 2025 would expertise some vital geomagnetic exercise, because of photo voltaic most, the height of the 11-year photo voltaic cycle. Observers in the correct place on the proper time on April 14-15, June 1, June 17 and Sept. 2 (and plenty of different dates) loved spectacular auroras as G4 geomagnetic storms produced auroras at low latitudes.
Learn extra: Extreme G4 geomagnetic storm sparks northern lights throughout US and past (pictures)
10. Comet Lemmon ripens
What are the possibilities of a naked-eye comet changing into seen on the identical evening as the height of the Orionid meteor bathe? Though it was solely on the cusp of naked-eye visibility — and was seen solely to astrophotographers within the Northern Hemisphere — Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6) placed on a present in mid- to late October. A shock companion, Comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN), appeared in telescope photographs on Sept. 10. However though it was initially brilliant, it by no means acquired as luminous as Lemmon.
Learn extra: Astrophotographers seize dazzling new views of Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) because it brightens for October skies
