Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) Setting at Paranal Observatory | ESO

Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) Setting at Paranal Observatory | ESO

A night photograph taken in the Atacama desert. The sky is full of stars, but the horizon is still partly orange as the Sun has just set. The comet appears as a bright white smudge that seems to touch the horizon. To the left there is a flat-topped hill with telescope domes on its summit.

Florentin Millour captured this breathtaking wide-field image of comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) on January 21, 2025, from European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile. The Very Large Telescope (VLT) sits atop Cerro Paranal to the left, while the comet sets in the western horizon right after sunset.

Credit: F. Millour/ESO
Release Date: March 17, 2025

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