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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 ...
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BREAKING: New Interstellar Object Candidate in our Solar System! | 5:11
EarthSky | 53.5K subscribers | 18,311 views | Streamed live on July 2, 2025
As long as it doesn’t slow down we are cool.
L
VGER
👍
Red Dwarf.
I can’t believe that thing was launched without a spellcheck app.
Forward recon is amping up.
It’s oumoamoa’s bigger sister.
Bigmoomoo
12 miles across. That’s about the size of Darth Vader’s Super Star Destroyer.
The JMC ship is about 3 million years early...
The RD crew flip flopped through time every few episodes.
Put a probe on it and watch
Remember when we did the moonshot?
They really do need to come up with a better name for this.
I propose “Trump-Star”
Oumuamua.
(We have to spell these interstellar thingies correctly. There could be all sorts of diplomatic issues...)
The dim space rock
~~~~~~~~~~~
Not a very nice way of describing our guest...
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