Space and Astronomy News for the 11th of October 2025

Observing an interstellar comet. From Mars!

Are we living in the future yet?

ExoMars TGO images comet 3I/ATLAS. Image via ESA

One of the more interesting astro images to arrive in 2025 is this simple animation of the path of Comet 3I/ATLAS as observed from a spacecraft in orbit around the planet Mars.

When ESA (European Space Agency) sent their ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express missions to the red planet, the last thing they probably planned for was their spacecraft needing to turn away from observing the Martian surface a few thousand kms below to record the passage of a comet whizzing through the Solar System from interstellar space. 

ExoMars TGO took a number of images used to create the animation above with its Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) camera. You can see the image of Comet 3I/ATLAS moving through the centre of the animation, with the fuzzy bits around it being the comet's coma. 

Nick Thomas, Principal Investigator of the CaSSIS camera explains, “This was a very challenging observation for the instrument. The comet is around 10 000 to 100 000 times fainter than our usual target.” 

Read more at the ESA website here.

We haven't seen a complete set of images taken of Comet 3I/ATLAS due to the federal government shutdown in the USA effecting NASA operations.  

What's the furthest object humans have even seen?

One of the common questions we're often asked here at BINTEL is simply "How far can I see with my telescope?"

In fact, it was the topic of my talk when I was honoured to be asked to speak at the recent Sutherland Astronomical Society's Open Night in August. (Quick answer: for most amateur telescopes it's astro critter called 3C 273, a quasar in a galaxy in the Virgo cluster that's some 2.5 billion light years away. MSH 04-12 in Eridanus might be worth mentioning but is very faint.) 

I had a young astronomer and his family visit us the other day and was asked the tricky question of not only how far away can we see with the types of telescopes BINTEL has, but how far have humans ever been able to see. 

It's not a bad topic to cover!

The most distant galaxy observed, MoM-z14. Image via: Rohan P. Naidu et al (2025)/NASA/JWST, NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Brant Robertson (UC Santa Cruz) Ben Johnson (CfA) Sandro Tacchella (Cambridge) Phill Cargile (CfA)

Currently the holder of the record is a distant galaxy called MoM-z14. 

This was imaged by the JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) on the 16th of May 2025 at a distance of some 13.53 billion light years. What's more, this bright, compact and fully formed galaxy was seen at only 280 million years after the Big Bang and the light from it is highly red shifted. This made it an ideal object for the infrared instruments onboard Webb to record. 

This is because the galaxy is moving away from us at an extreme speed and the wavelengths of light are stretched.  We also see it at a time of rapid star formation, with the ionised light from the new stars travelling easily through the dust and gas between us and this distant galaxy.  

Will Webb spot even more distant galaxies from the earliest days of the Universe? No doubt.

A new meteorite discovered in Cunnamulla in western Queensland confirmed

Some cool news for fans of space rocks this week. A 26.63 kg meteorite, originally discovered in 2009 has been confirmed and has received an official name of Tuen.

Found on Plainview Station near Tuen in Western Queensland, it was thought to be a meteorite because it was half buried and stood out in the paddock, against a fence. There's no firm timeline about how long it been there as its fall to Earth wasn't observed, however it was likely to have been a few years prior to the discovery as there wasn't much weathering.

Tony Forsyth with Tuen in a post to the Australian Meteor Reports Facebook group. Read more here.

A small sample of Tuen was taken for analysis, and this was used to confirm that it is in fact an L4 class meteorite. While there's lot of various fragments of meteorites that are the hands of collectors or for sale, intact meteorites such as Tuen are rare and offer us a unique chance to study the early period of the Solar System.

You can read more at The Meteoritical Society official database listing for Tuen here.

ASCOM Alpaca is now available on the ZWO Seestar S30 and S50 Smart Telescopes

News out this week is the availability of ASCOM Alpaca support for some of the most popular telescopes available today. ASCOM Alpaca is a software interface layer between astronomical device hardware and a wide range of astronomical software applications. Basically, by offering Alpaca on the S30 and S50, ZWO have enabled their popular telescopes to be used with powerful planetarium, astrophotography, guiding and apps such as N.I.N.A., Sequence Generator Pro (SGP),  Cartes du Ciel, Stellarium and many other others.

Check out this YouTube video that covers ASCOM Alpaca on a ZWO Seestar 

While the ZWO Seestar telescopes are designed to be used by complete beginners getting into astrophotography, updates like this also make them more interesting for experienced astro imagers as well. We'll have our own detailed article and comments about this shortly. 

Our friends with DWARF Smart Telescopes don't need to feel left out. ASCOM Alpaca is on the way for your devices as well.

Cheers,

Earl White 

BINTEL

11th October 2025