Overview
- Hubble imaged comet C/2025 K1 over Nov. 8–10, 2025, resolving at least four fragments with distinct comae and catching a secondary split.
- Researchers estimate the fragmentation started about eight days before the first image, revealing a delay before the later brightening seen from Earth.
- Proposed explanations for the delay include a transient dust crust over fresh ice or heat penetrating to build subsurface pressure before ejecting dust.
- The comet, roughly 8 kilometers across before disintegration, passed perihelion at 0.33 AU on Oct. 8, 2025, and is a long-period object likely from the Oort Cloud.
- The fragments now form a dispersing cloud about 250 million miles (400 million kilometers) from Earth in Pisces on an outbound path unlikely to return, with findings informing future work such as ESA’s Comet Interceptor.