Posted on 07/03/2025 5:26:55 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
For only the 3rd time in history, astronomers have found an interstellar object hurtling through our solar system...
The Minor Planet Center (MPC) confirmed its new designation on July 2, 2025, as 3I/ATLAS, or C/2025 N1. The MPC also said:
There are tentative reports of cometary activity … with a marginal coma and a short 3-arcsecond tail....
We are currently being visited by what appears to be a comet from another solar system...
We only know of two other interstellar objects that have entered into our solar system before, 'Oumuamua and Comet 2I/Borisov. The nature of 'Oumuamua is still a matter of debate, and the second was a comet from another solar system. And now we have a third interstellar visitor. First named A11pl3Z, the object is now designated as 3I/ATLAS, or C/2025 N1. The object's trajectory indicates it didn't originate inside our own solar system...
The dim space rock is currently at about magnitude 18.8. Our new visitor will get its closest to the sun – at about 2 astronomical units (AU), or twice as far as Earth is from the sun – in October. As it reaches perihelion – its closest point to the sun – it should be moving at about 68 km/s relative to the sun, or at about 152,000 miles per hour.
Marshall Eubanks, a physicist and VLBI radio astronomer and co-founder of Space Initiatives, said on the Minor Planet Mailing List that the object could be as large as 12 miles (20 km) in diameter. It will also come within about 0.4 AU of Mars in October, which would make it just barely observable by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. With the current orbital data, Eubanks said:
This object appears to be coming from the thin galactic disk.
(Excerpt) Read more at earthsky.org ...
Space Truckin’ is a good pick. Here’s one from Klaatu.
Please interstellar policemen,
won’t you give us a sign, give us a sign,
that we’ve reached you.
https://youtu.be/jJ4IUjjVfng?feature=shared
Given that it is very dim, we should call it the Biden-Harris Object.
I would sure like to get a sample of it or it’s debris trail to do some mass spectrometer work on.
Biden boulder?
A democrat federal district court will issue an order instructing Homeland Security to welcome this comet into our atmosphere.
👍
A rendezvous with Rama?
I think there’s been more than two objects that have entered our solar system.
Obamalamadingdong was the 3rd because it sure as heck wasn’t from this planet and was, and is, a dim rock. lol
.
Wow. It’s been decades since I read that one.
Published in 1973.
It would be nice to have something ready for when these come through, and I’d be surprised if these interlopers haven’t been rocketing through the Solar System for billions of years — we just never had means of detecting them before.
The problem of course is their velocity — if we could send a hitchhiking probe fast enough to land on it, we wouldn’t need the interloper. 😎
Good choice, love the old Barrett music
Rendezvous with Rana, I’ve enjoyed their pesto for years.
Just three have definitely been interstellar. There *may* have been more in the past, but there was insufficient data to figure it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_asteroid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parabolic_and_hyperbolic_comets
Yeah, searching for its “Creator”…
(VGER)
Bald-headed woman 🎵🎵🎶
Bald-headed woman to me! 🎵🎵🎶
The basis for claiming that is the orbit…
There could be some other reason for the orbit.
they’ll spend million of (probably our tax) dollars “studying this visitor
when we all know it is no mystery, just Santa Claus out for a summertime flyby to check up on whether Planet Earth is still here or not
he has to know now in order to plan his gift making enterprise (and to know if his reindeer herd can handle the deliveries or whether he needs to call FedEx to help)
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