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Comet 3I/ATLAS is heading toward a rare encounter with NASA’s Europa Clipper, offering a unique opportunity to uncover secrets of the cosmos. © Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Shadow the Scientist NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, currently on its way to Jupiter, may soon encounter a unique scientific opportunity. The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is about to cross the path of the spacecraft’s trajectory, potentially showering it with charged particles from its ion tail. This rare alignment could provide the closest look yet at material from beyond our solar system, offering a glimpse into the distant star systems where such comets originated. A...

...Scientists have been keeping a close watch on those changes, both to ensure there’s nothing unexplainable by our current understanding, but also to compare 3I/ATLAS to both previous interstellar visitors as well as comets in our own solar system. A recent paper from European researchers describes how the changes in a particular material ratio in 3I/ATLAS’ coma fit with our current understanding of cometary geology.That ratio is the nickel to iron (Ni/FE) abundance ratio. It has been measured for two decades, including on twenty in-system comets as well as 2I/Borisov, the last known interstellar visitor our solar system had. However,...

3I/ATLAS is a mad topic surrounded by speculations about aliens and other controversial takes. But there's a lot of real science about this fascinating objects. So, in this video we put together all the major discoveries and scientific papers about 3I/ATLAS. 3I/ATLAS Is Extremely Weird. But Not In The Ways You Think | 23:39 Fraser Cain | 476K subscribers | 74,119 views | October 10, 2025

Recent images purportedly depicting the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS during its closest approach to Mars last week have erupted in controversy online, as many took to social media with theories about what the object’s unusual shape could mean about its nature and origins. The new images obtained last week by NASA’s Perseverance rover appear to show 3I/ATLAS streaking through the Martian night sky as it passed through the field of view of the robotic explorer’s Right Navigation Camera (Navcam) from its position in Jezero Crater. The recent imagery was originally uploaded to NASA’s multimedia page in raw format. Since that time,...

According to the team the polarimetric behavior is "significantly different from all known comets (either interstellar or bound to our Solar System)". 3I/ATLAS imaged by NASA’s Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx). Image credit: NASA/SPHEREx. ================================================================= Ateam of astronomers have presented the first polarimetric observations of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, finding that it has extreme negative polarization. On July 1, 2025, astronomers spotted an object moving through the Solar System at nearly twice the velocity of previous interstellar visitors ‘Oumuamua and Comet Borisov. The object was confirmed to be an interstellar comet with...

Explanation: From somewhere else in the Milky Way galaxy, Comet 2I/Borisov was just visiting the Solar System. Discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov on August 30, 2019, the first known interstellar comet is seen in these two Hubble Space Telescope images from November and December 2019. On the left, a distant background galaxy near the line-of-sight to Borisov is blurred as Hubble tracked the speeding comet and dust tail about 327 million kilometers from Earth. At right, 2I/Borisov appears shortly after perihelion, its closest approach to Sun. European Southern Observatory observations indicate that this comet may never have passed close...

May 8, 2020May 8, 2020 by Evan GoughA Cool Idea to Catch Up With an Interstellar Visitor Poor, dim-witted humanity. We used to think we were the center of everything. That wasn’t that long ago, and even though we’ve made tremendous advancements in our understanding of our situation here in space, we still have huge blind spots.For one, we’re only now waking up to the reality of interstellar objects passing through our Solar System. In 2017, Oumuamua came for a brief visit, and was confirmed as an interstellar object. It’ll never return, and will spend an eternity travelling through the...

Since it was first discovered in August 2019, astronomers have been awestruck by interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov. But recent observations of the space object suggest that it could be breaking apart. A group of researchers from Poland have noted that the object has brightened up twice this month. “The total brightness increase is thus about 0.7 mag in 5 days between UT 2020 March 4.3 and 9.3,” the researchers wrote in a note published March 12. “This behavior is strongly indicative of an ongoing nucleus fragmentation.” In September 1019, the International Astronomical Union confirmed that the object was from another solar...

Last year, an extraordinary thing happened: for the first time in recorded history, astronomers and astrophysicists observed an interstellar object enter and leave our solar system. Over the years, they’ve documented plenty of comets, asteroids, and other cosmic bodies but all have been gravitationally bound to an orbit within our star system. This object, named ‘Oumuamua, came from outside our system, from a star or molecular cloud tens or even hundreds of millions of light-years away, and then left.

The mystery of Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever spotted in our solar system, has taken a new, unexpected twist and it's from someone you might not expect – NASA. ..." Because of the varying degrees of brightness emanating from Oumuamua's surface, NASA suggests it is "highly elongated and probably less than half a mile (2,600 feet, or 800 meters) in its longest dimension."The intrigue of what Oumuamua is or isn't has picked up a considerably over the past few weeks, especially as some researchers have theorized that it could be an object from an extraterrestrial civilization.A study from the Harvard...

‘Oumuamua was first detected by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii, in October 2017 while the telescope was surveying for near-Earth asteroids.Subsequent detailed observations conducted by multiple ground-based telescopes and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope detected the sunlight reflected off ‘Oumuamua’s surface.Large variations in the object’s brightness suggested that ‘Oumuamua is highly elongated and probably less than 2,600 feet (800 m) in its longest dimension.But NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope tracks asteroids and comets using the infrared energy, or heat, that they radiate, which can provide more specific information about an object’s size than optical observations of...

A mysterious reddish cigar-shaped object spotted tumbling through our solar system last year may have been an alien spacecraft sent to investigate Earth, astronomers from Harvard University have suggested.

Harvard scientists reexamined the bizarre, interstellar space object known as “Oumuamua,” which rocketed through our solar system late last year, resurrecting the possibility that it may be an alien probe. Academics and scientists were quick to write off the cigar-shaped object as a previously unknown type of bolide – a comet or asteroid – propelled in a highly unusual manner, but their observations are once again, being challenged. Oumuamua, which means “a messenger sent to reach out in advance,” was first observed by Robert Weryk at the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii. He measured the object to be several hundred...

NASA may have ruled that Oumuamua, the first interstellar object ever spotted in our system is a "metallic or rocky object" approximately 400 meters (1,312 feet) in length and 40 meters (131 feet) wide, but a new study from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says it could be something much more exciting – it could be "a lightsail of artificial origin" sent from another civilization. The study, which was posted online earlier this month, suggests that Oumuamua's strange "excess acceleration" could be artificial in nature, as it has been implied that it is not an active comet.

Our solar system's first known interstellar visitor is likely even more alien than previously imagined, a new study suggests. The mysterious, needle-shaped object 'Oumuamua, which was spotted zooming through Earth's neighborhood last October, probably originated in a two-star system, according to the study. 'Oumuamua means "scout" in Hawaiian; the object was discovered by researchers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), at Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui. ... "It's really odd that the first object we would see from outside our system would be an asteroid, because a comet would be a lot easier to...

A new analysis of the data obtained when the interstellar object Oumuamua flew through the solar system in October 2016 suggests that it is tumbling in a chaotic manner, and that the surface is spotty....Dr Fraser explains: “Our modelling of this body suggests the tumbling will last for many billions of years to hundreds of billions of years before internal stresses cause it to rotate normally again."

Astronomers are set to scan an 'alien' comet for signs of extraterrestrial signals The cigar-shaped object, named 'Oumuamua, sailed past Earth last month The mysterious comet is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system Now a team of alien-hunting scientists led by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is scanning the object for radio signals Astronomers are set to scan an 'alien' comet for signs of extraterrestrial technology. The cigar-shaped asteroid, named 'Oumuamua by its discoverers, sailed past Earth last month and is the first interstellar object seen in the solar system. A team of alien-hunting scientists, led by Russian...

To recap, when `Oumuamua was first observed on October 19th, 2017, by astronomers using the University of Hawaii’s Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), the object (then known as C/2017 U1) was initially believed to be a comet. However, subsequent observations revealed that it was actually an asteroid and it was renamed 1I/2017 U1 (or 1I/`Oumuamua). Follow-up observations made using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) were able to place constraints on the asteroid’s size, brightness, composition, color and orbit. These revealed that `Oumuamua measured some 400 meters (1312 feet) long, is very elongated, and spins on its axis...

Now, new data reveal the interstellar interloper to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue. The asteroid, named ‘Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated—perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system to date. While its elongated shape is quite surprising, and unlike asteroids seen in our solar system, it may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed. The observations and analyses were funded in part by NASA and appear...

"... It appears to be a dark, reddish, highly-elongated rocky..." "varies dramatically in brightness by a factor of ten as it spins on its axis every 7.3 hours."