JUST IN: Hubble snaps stunning image of mysterious interstellar comet speeding through space

DDM News

(DDM) – The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, offering scientists an unprecedented view of a rare visitor from beyond our solar system.

DDM gathered that the image, taken on July 21 by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, shows a teardrop-shaped dust cocoon streaming from the comet’s icy nucleus. The nucleus itself, a solid core of ice, dust, and rock, is invisible in the image but is believed to measure between 1,000 feet (305 meters) and 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in diameter.

As comets approach stars like the Sun, heat causes them to release gas and dust, forming their iconic tails. In the case of 3I/ATLAS, this activity is occurring as it speeds through our solar system at a blistering 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) per hour, making it the fastest known interstellar object ever observed in transit.

The comet was first detected on July 1, and since then, astronomers have deployed a fleet of space and ground-based telescopes to track it. These include the James Webb Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Researchers hope this collaboration will reveal the object’s chemical composition and provide clues to its origin.

3I/ATLAS is expected to remain visible to ground-based telescopes until September, after which it will pass too close to the Sun to observe. It is predicted to reemerge on the other side of the Sun in early December.

Despite the high-resolution images, the comet’s origins remain shrouded in mystery.

“No one knows where the comet came from,” said David Jewitt, lead author of a study on the object and a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. You can’t project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started.”

Its extreme speed, however, confirms it as a visitor from another star system. Scientists believe it has been traveling through interstellar space for billions of years, accelerated by gravitational slingshots from passing stars and stellar nurseries.

The discovery of 3I/ATLAS marks only the third confirmed interstellar object to pass through our solar system, following the detection of ‘Oumuamua in 2017 and comet 2I/Borisov in 2019.

Matthew Hopkins, a recent doctoral graduate from the University of Oxford who co-authored a separate study, said the comet’s velocity is especially valuable for research.

“This velocity is very useful to us in particular as over the last few years me and my coauthors have been building a model that allows us to predict properties of interstellar objects such as their age and composition, just from their velocity,” Hopkins explained.

Astronomers say each interstellar object offers a rare scientific opportunity to study material from distant star systems, potentially unlocking secrets about the formation and evolution of planets, comets, and other celestial bodies across the galaxy.

At its current pace, 3I/ATLAS will not linger long, but its brief passage is already providing scientists with data that could reshape our understanding of cosmic travelers from beyond our Sun’s domain.

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