The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on 6 August 2025 using its Near-Infrared Spectrograph. The research team is analysing Webb’s data, with a preprint now available online. Webb is one of several space telescopes studying this comet, helping to reveal its size, physical properties, and chemical composition. For example, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s …
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Press enter or click to view image in full size Logarithm of the nickel mass loss rate from 3I/ATLAS (vertical axis) as a function of heliocentric distance (horizontal axis). Blue circles show Very Large Telescope/X-shooter measurements of 3I/ATLAS and the black solid curve is a power–law fit to the data with a power-law index of −8.43±0.79. Colored symbols compare with …
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Researchers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to observe 3I/ATLAS on Aug. 6. (Image credit: NASA/James Webb Space Telescope) Astronomers have found something strange in the James Webb Space Telescope‘s first images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it hurtles toward our sun, according to a new study. The telescope’s initial observations suggested that 3I/ATLAS has one of the highest carbon …
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Aug. 27 (UPI) — NASA observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS through the lens of the James Webb Space Telescope for the first time. On Aug. 6, the telescope with its near-infrared Spectrograph instrument analyzed the comet as it provided more information about its size, physical properties, and chemical makeup. This kind of observation can help make clear what conditions were like …
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Press enter or click to view image in full size Spectrally integrated flux maps for 3I/ATLAS observed by the NIRSpec instrument on the Webb telescope. Panel (a) shows the scattered sunlight around 3I/ATLAS on a scale of a few thousand kilometers (smaller by a factor of a hundred than the size of the CO2 plume detected by SPHEREx) at a …
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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has observed the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS for the first time. The powerful space telescope trained its infrared vision and its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument (NIRspec) on the comet on Aug. 6, 2025. Discovered on July 1 by the ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope, 3I/ATLAS is just the third-ever object found drifting through …
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Press enter or click to view image in full size The Hubble Space telescope image of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS on 21 July 21, 2025. The glow of scattered sunlight is elongated ahead of the object towards the Sun and shows no cometary tail in the opposite direction. The short, light blue diagonal streaks are background stars that move during …
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Press enter or click to view image in full size Three images of 3I/ATLAS, taken by the SPHEREx Space Observatory. The images were observed at wavelengths of 3.0, 4.26, and 4.7 micrometers, corresponding to prominent emission lines of H2O, CO2 and CO gas, from left to right respectively. 3I/ATLAS is undetected in H2O and CO. By contrast, a bright CO2 …
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Comet 3I/ATLAS, the third known and fastest interstellar object to fly across the Solar System, is at it again. The latest oddity shown by this comet is how it is spewing dust. As they get closer to the Sun, comets typically release a tail of gas and dust and a second tail of ions. Comet 3I’s tail is still pretty …
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3I/ATLAS, the third interstellar object making headlines today, is the oldest of the three. Kakharov and Loeb wrote in the paper that it has a median age of 4.6 billion years. It originated from the Milky Way’s thick disk, the region where older, lower metallicity stars reside. The researchers say that this shows that “ISOs are ejected from planetary systems …
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