{"id":217501,"date":"2025-12-05T22:01:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T22:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/217501\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T22:01:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T22:01:10","slug":"hubble-takes-new-look-at-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/217501\/","title":{"rendered":"Hubble Takes New Look at Interstellar Comet 3I\/ATLAS"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Hubble team has released a stunning new image snapped by the NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS, which is only the third object of its kind ever observed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"This<\/a><\/p>\n

This image of the interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS was taken by Hubble on November 30, 2025. At the time, the comet was about 286 million km (178 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: NASA \/ ESA \/ STScI \/ D. Jewitt, UCLA \/ M.-T. Hui, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory \/ J. DePasquale, STScI.<\/p>\n

3I\/ATLAS<\/a> was discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on July 1, 2025.<\/p>\n

At the time, the interstellar comet was at a heliocentric distance of 4.51 astronomical units (AU), with an eccentricity of 6.13.<\/p>\n

Also known as C\/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and A11pl3Z, the object arrived from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and is moving with a very high radial velocity of around 58 km (36 miles) per second.<\/p>\n

3I\/ATLAS made a close approach to Mars at a distance of 0.194 AU on October 3 and reached its closest approach to the Sun \u2014 known as perihelion \u2014 on October 30.<\/p>\n

The interstellar visitor will be approaching Jupiter at a distance of 0.357 AU on March 16, 2026.<\/p>\n

On November 30, the astronomers used Hubble\u2019s Wide Field Camera 3<\/a> (WFC3) instrument to observe 3I\/ATLAS.<\/p>\n

\u201cHubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky,\u201d they said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result, background stars appear as streaks of light.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHubble previously observed<\/a> 3I\/ATLAS in July, shortly after its discovery, and a number of NASA missions have since studied the comet as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cObservations are expected to continue for several more months as 3I\/ATLAS heads out of the Solar System.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe image shows a teardrop-shaped glowing halo that extends towards the Sun,\u201d said<\/a> Harvard University\u2019s Professor Avi Loeb about the new Hubble image.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis sunward anti-tail extension was also apparent in the pre-perihelion Hubble image, taken on July 21, as 3I\/ATLAS was approaching the Sun from a distance that is 56% larger from Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new radius of the glow is about 40,000 km (24,855 miles) and its anti-tail extension goes out to about 60,000 km (37,282 miles).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a recent paper<\/a>, I suggested that the teardrop of the coma in post-perihelion images of 3I\/ATLAS is associated with a large number of macroscopic non-volatile objects that separated from it as a result of its measured non-gravitational acceleration away from the Sun,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI predicted that by November 30th, the swarm of objects would be closer to the Sun than 3I\/ATLAS by about 60,000 km if the objects overlapped with 3I\/ATLAS at perihelion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis separation is in perfect agreement with the anti-tail extension of the teardrop shape in the new Hubble image.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hubble team has released a stunning new image snapped by the NASA\/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[10866,7043,18,6145,7446,19,10881,10867,17,1024,133,10214],"class_list":{"0":"post-217501","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-3i-atlas","9":"tag-comet","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-esa","12":"tag-hubble","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-interstellar-comet","15":"tag-interstellar-object","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-nasa","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-solar-system"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115669217445540732","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}