Posted on 07/29/2025 8:45:03 AM PDT by Red Badger
Perhaps Bezos can send his giant space penis, manned by an all-woman crew, on an intercept of the object for a closer look.
Or, we just let Elon do the heavy lifting since NASA is no longer able to.
The last thing we need is more illegal aliens.
150000 mph is 0.0224% of the speed of light, BTW. Light is really fast ...
36.111 miles per second?
Bruce had dementia and Will is on hiatus...............
Heh, an adaptation of the old 3-legged pig joke!
3I Atlas will pass very close to Mars, Venus and Jupiter defying huge odds, but will only approach Earth at some great distance on its way to the Sun, which, due to 3I Atlas’ speed, will not alter the object’s course by very much.
Last I heard, IIRC, the closest approach would be about twice Earth’s distance from the sun.
Some dumb ass aliens if they’re coming at 130k miles per hour as an interstellar object either that or they grow old very slow.
AI take:
3I/ATLAS Comet
3I/ATLAS, also known as C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and previously as A11pl3Z, is an interstellar comet discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) station at Río Hurtado, Chile on 1 July 2025.
The comet follows an unbound, hyperbolic trajectory past the Sun with an orbital eccentricity of 6.14 and a very fast hyperbolic excess velocity of 58 km/s (36 mi/s) relative to the Sun. It is the third interstellar object confirmed passing through the Solar System, after 1I/ʻOumuamua (discovered in October 2017) and 2I/Borisov (discovered in August 2019).
The size of 3I/ATLAS’s nucleus is uncertain because it is an active comet surrounded by a coma, a diffuse envelope made of icy dust ejected from the comet’s outgassing surface. Estimates for the nucleus diameter of 3I/ATLAS range from 0.8 to 11 km (0.5 to 6.8 mi), though a diameter toward the lower end of the range is more likely.
3I/ATLAS will come closest to the Sun on 29 October 2025, at a distance of 1.36 AU (203 million km; 126 million mi) from the Sun, which is between the orbits of and . 3I/ATLAS poses no threat to Earth because the comet will not come closer than 1.8 AU (270 million km; 170 million mi) from Earth.
The comet appears to have originated from the Milky Way’s thick disk where older stars reside, which means that the comet could be at least 7 billion years old (older than the Solar System) and could have a water-rich composition. Observations so far have found that the comet is made of water ice and silicate minerals, which are substances commonly found in comets. Other volatile ices such as carbon dioxide and ammonia are expected to exist in 3I/ATLAS, but have not been detected yet. Future observations by more sensitive instruments like the James Webb Space Telescope will be able to determine the composition of 3I/ATLAS.
3I/ATLAS was discovered on 1 July 2025 by the NASA-funded ATLAS survey telescope at Río Hurtado, Chile (observatory code W68). At apparent magnitude 18, the newly discovered object was entering the inner Solar System at a speed of 61 km/s (140,000 mph; 220,000 km/h) relative to the Sun, located 3.50 AU (524 million km; 325 million mi) from Earth and 4.51 AU from the Sun, and was moving in the sky along the border of the constellations Serpens Cauda and Sagittarius, near the galactic plane. It was given the temporary designation ‘A11pl3Z’ and the discovery observations were submitted to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center (MPC). These observations initially suggested that the object could be on a highly eccentric path that might come close to Earth’s orbit, which led the MPC to temporarily list the object in the Near-Earth Object Confirmation Page.
Follow-up observations from other observatories, involving both professional and amateur astronomers, began to reveal that the object’s trajectory would not come near Earth, but instead could be interstellar with a hyperbolic trajectory. Pre-discovery observations of 3I/ATLAS confirmed its interstellar trajectory; these included Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF, observatory code I41) observations from 28 to 29 June 2025 that were found within a few hours of the initial report, ZTF observations from 14 to 21 June 2025, and ATLAS observations from 25 to 29 June 2025. Amateur astronomer Sam Deen has noted additional ATLAS pre-discovery observations from 5 to 25 June 2025, and suspected that 3I/ATLAS was not discovered earlier because it was passing in front of the Galactic Center’s dense star fields, where the comet would be hard to discern.
Initial observations of 3I/ATLAS were unclear on whether 3I/ATLAS is an asteroid or a comet. Various astronomers including Alan Hale reported no cometary features, but observations on 2 July 2025 by the Deep Random Survey (X09) at Chile, Lowell Discovery Telescope (G37) at Arizona, and Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope (T14) at Mauna Kea showed a marginal coma and a short tail 3 arcseconds in angular length, which indicated the object is a comet. On 2 July 2025, the MPC announced the discovery of 3I/ATLAS and gave it the interstellar object designation “3I”, signifying it being the third interstellar object confirmed. The MPC also gave 3I/ATLAS the non-periodic comet designation C/2025 N1 (ATLAS). By the time 3I/ATLAS was announced, the MPC had collected 122 observations of the comet from 31 different observatories.
Observations by David Jewitt and Jane Luu using the Nordic Optical Telescope on 2 July 2025 confirmed that 3I/ATLAS was “clearly active” with a diffuse tail. Miguel R. Alarcón and a team of researchers of the IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) using Teide Observatory’s Two-meter Twin Telescope also found cometary activity on the same date, with a tail at least 25,000 km (16,000 mi) long. Multi-band observations at the Kottamia Astronomical Observatory 1.88-m telescope, the Palomar 200-inch telescope, and the Astrophysical Research Consortium 3.5-m telescope on 2025 July 2, 3 showed the comet had colors of B-V=0.98±0.23, V-R=0.71±0.09, R-I=0.14±0.10, g-r=0.84±0.05 mag, r-i=0.16±0.03 mag, i-z=-0.02±0.07 mag, and g-i=1.00±0.05 mag and a spectral slope of 16.0±1.9 %/100 nm. Faulkes Telescope North measurements of 3I/ATLAS’s brightness through different light filters showed that the comet’s coma had a reddish color indicative of dust, similar to that of the previous interstellar comet 2I/Borisov.
On 6 July, additional observations were published, including Zwicky Transient Facility (I41) precoveries from several nights between 22 May and 21 June 2025. An even earlier precovery from 21 May 2025, made at Weizmann Astrophysical Observatory (M01), was published on 18 July 2025. The newly-commissioned Vera C. Rubin Observatory has serendipitously imaged 3I/ATLAS during its science validation observations from 21 June to 3 July 2025. These observations showed a slight increase in the comet’s coma diameter and provided constraints on the comet’s nucleus diameter. The Vera Rubin Observatory would have discovered 3I/ATLAS before the ATLAS survey if it had begun its science validation observations two weeks earlier.
The Hubble Space Telescope took images of 3I/ATLAS on 21 July 2025. In November 2025, Hubble will perform ultraviolet spectroscopy on 3I/ATLAS to determine the composition of its gas emissions and sulfur-to-oxygen ratio, and the telescope will monitor the comet on its way out of the Solar System. Furthermore, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is scheduled to observe 3I/ATLAS in August and December 2025, before and after the comet’s perihelion, respectively. Infrared spectroscopy by the JWST will be able to detect certain compounds in 3I/ATLAS, such as water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and ammonia.
3I/ATLAS follows an extremely hyperbolic trajectory past the Sun because it is moving too fast to be bound by the Sun’s gravity. When 3I/ATLAS entered the Solar System, it was moving at a speed of 58 km/s (36 mi/s) relative to the Sun - this speed is the comet’s hyperbolic excess velocity (v∞). As 3I/ATLAS comes closer to the Sun and gets pulled in by the Sun’s gravity, the comet will speed up ...
Or so they believe....................
Eggplant that ate Chicago
Coming back for the rest of the eggplants in Chicago
😆
Wormwood?
Don’t worry, if they are aliens, Trump will deport them. I doubt they have a valid visa.
There sure seems to be a lot of Freeper interest in this topic.
But, but in the Book, your dad spoke Tagalog!
“”Darn!.......................””
Lol!
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