{"id":180621,"date":"2025-08-27T20:32:20","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/180621\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T20:32:20","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:32:20","slug":"nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-observes-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/180621\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA James Webb Space Telescope observes interstellar comet 3i\/ATLAS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Aug. 27 (UPI) &#8212; NASA observed interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS through the lens of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/topic\/James_Webb\/\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"James Webb\" class=\"tpstyle\" rel=\"noopener\">James Webb<\/a> Space Telescope for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>On Aug. 6, the telescope<a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyatnightmagazine.com\/news\/3i-atlas-spherex-webb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> with its near-infrared Spectrograph instrument<\/a> analyzed the comet as it provided more information about its size, physical properties, and chemical makeup.\n<\/p>\n<p>This kind of observation can help make clear what conditions were like in the systems where comets like 3I\/ATLAS was formed.<\/p>\n<p>3I\/ATLAS is outgassing as it approaches the sun, which was speculated that it would.<\/p>\n<p>Astronomers identified it as made of carbon dioxide, water, water ice, carbon monoxide, and the smell gas carbon sulfide.<\/p>\n<p>The comet has the highest ratio of carbon dioxide to water ever observed in a comet, which implies that the comet contains ices that were exposed to much higher levels of radiation.<\/p>\n<p>The team also suggested the comet could have been formed in a<a href=\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/astronomy\/james-webb-space-telescope-takes-1st-look-at-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-with-unexpected-results\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> &#8220;carbon dioxide ice line.<\/a> Additionally, the comet could also be around 7 billion years old, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Science_News\/2025\/07\/11\/space-science-nasa-comet-3IATLAS-oldest\/2871752246871\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a previous discovery found.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The comet was first discovered on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.upi.com\/Science_News\/2025\/07\/03\/space-nasa-discovers-third-interstellar-comet\/2951751552424\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">July 1st by NASA&#8217;s Asteroid Terrestrial impact Alert system.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aug. 27 (UPI) &#8212; NASA observed interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS through the lens of the James Webb Space Telescope&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":180622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[14824,78451,159,783,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-180621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-james-webb","9":"tag-james-webb-space","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115102636073767853","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}