Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) dramatically revealed its fragile nature when it fragmented in late November, splitting into multiple bright components that now drift together inside a fading envelope of dust. This luminance image, built from 140 twenty-second exposures taken on November 21, 2025, captures the comet at the moment its nucleus was visibly separating. The twin points of light at the head are the individual fragments, each shedding material as solar heating pulled the comet apart from within.

Trailing behind the breakup is a broad, soft dust tail stretched by the solar wind into a smooth gradient of scattered sunlight. The surrounding starfield offers a stark contrast to the comet’s disrupted core, emphasizing how quickly the structure of a seemingly solid nucleus can collapse when exposed to the stresses of a close approach to the Sun. Breakup events like this offer a rare chance to study the internal weakness, composition, and thermal response of dynamically young comets from the outer solar system.