Hot on the tail of the Quadrantids meteor shower, another spectacle in the sky is about to arrive: comet Atlas C/2024 G3, which will reach perihelion—the point of its orbit closest to the sun—on January 13. On the same day, we will also see it at its closest point to Earth, and it could become 2025’s brightest comet, during a year in which no other comets are likely to be visible to the naked eye. Here’s everything you need to know.

C/2024 G3 was discovered on April 5, 2024, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (Atlas)—a network of telescopes that scans space for asteroids that could potentially hit Earth. The comet comes from the Oort Cloud, a remote region at the outer edge of the solar system that is believed to contain the remnants of the materials that formed the solar systems’s planets.

When comet C/2024 G3 reaches perihelion, it will come within just 13.5 million kilometers of the sun—for context, Mercury, the planet closest to the sun, orbits the star at a distance of 47 million kilometers. According to the latest calculations reported by the Planetary Society, C/2024 G3 could reach a brightness of magnitude –4.5, which is about the same as Venus, and is likely to be visible to the naked eye for people located in the southern hemisphere.

The comet’s unusually close journey to the sun, however, raises questions about whether it will survive. Its orbital path suggests that it is a dynamically old comet, and that this isn’t its first trip around the sun. In fact, its last approach is estimated to have been about 160,000 years ago, which means it may have already survived a close pass. “It will be very heated and may not survive,” says Nick James, director of the comet section of the