Mercury was recently seen disguising itself as a comet as the sun’s neighboring planet reaches its closest point to our star, revealing its massive striped tail across the night sky. An astrophotographer took a truly epic photo of the shenanigans.

Comets are frozen chunks of rock, gas, and dust that are almost always seen with characteristic twin tails behind them – one made up of gas escaping from within, and the other made up of dust from their surfaces. These two tails are blown in the same direction from the comet by charged particles from the sun, known as the solar wind.

Mercury, the smallest planet in the Solar System, has a comet tail made up of predominantly sodium ions scattering from the planet’s surface by the solar wind and micrometeor impacts. Researchers have known about Mercury’s tail since 2001 and have since discovered that the planet has grown and contracted depending on its proximity to the sun.

At its peak, the tail is reportedly about 14.9 million miles (24 million kilometers) long, about 62 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. The tail stretches for such a great distance because Mercury has a very thin atmosphere and is close to the sun, which allows the solar wind to easily tear the planet’s surface.

For reasons unknown, Mercury’s tail is most visible from Earth exactly 16 days after perihelion, or where the planet is closest to the Sun, according to Spaceweather.com. Mercury reached its perihelion point on April 1, meaning its tail was at its brightest on April 17. But on April 12, astrophotographer Sebastian Waltmer captured a stunning view of the planet’s tail from a location near Spicheren, a commune in northeastern France.

For the casual observer, Mercury’s tail is very difficult to see, so it remained unexplored until the 21st century. But Voltmer was able to photograph the giant smoke thanks to a special filter that isolates the yellow light waves emitted by the excited sodium particles in the tail.

“Without such a filter, Mercury’s tail is nearly invisible to the naked eye,” Waltmer said.

Mercury isn’t the only celestial body in the Solar System with an incredible comet-like tail. The moon also has a tail that can be seen when the Earth passes through it once a month and wears it like a scarf. Like Mercury, the Moon’s tail is mostly made up of millions of sodium atoms.