The Hubble team has unveiled breathtaking new images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This marks only the third instance of such a comet being observed.
This image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was captured by Hubble on November 30, 2025. At that time, the comet was around 286 million kilometers (178 million miles) from Earth. Image credits: NASA / ESA / STScI / D. Jewitt, UCLA / M.-T. Hui, Shanghai Observatory / J. DePasquale, STScI.
Discovered on July 1, 2025, by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial Impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, 3I/ATLAS is a remarkable interstellar comet.
At the time of its discovery, the comet had a heliocentric distance of 4.51 astronomical units (AU) and an eccentricity of 6.13.
This object, also referred to as C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and A11pl3Z, approaches from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, traveling at an impressive radial velocity of about 58 km (36 miles) per second.
3I/ATLAS passed near Mars at a distance of 0.194 AU on October 3 and reached its closest encounter with the Sun, known as perihelion, on October 30.
On March 16, 2026, this interstellar visitor will approach Jupiter at a distance of 0.357 astronomical units.
On November 30th, astronomers utilized Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) to observe 3I/ATLAS.
“Hubble tracked a comet across the sky,” they stated.
“As a result, the background stars appear as streaks of light.”
“Hubble had previously observed 3I/ATLAS in July, shortly after its discovery, and several NASA missions have also studied the comet since then.”
“Observations are expected to persist for several more months as 3I/ATLAS journeys out of the solar system.”
“This image displays a teardrop-shaped glowing halo extending toward the sun,” stated Harvard University Professor Avi Loeb about the new Hubble images.
“This extension of the tail toward the sun was also noticeable in the pre-perihelion Hubble images taken on July 21, where 3I/ATLAS was approaching the Sun from a distance 56% greater than that of Earth.”
“The new radius of the glow is estimated to be around 40,000 km (24,855 miles), with its retro tail extension reaching approximately 60,000 km (37,282 miles).”
“In recent papers, I suggested that the coma teardrops in the 3I/ATLAS post-perihelion images are linked to numerous macroscopic non-volatile objects that have separated from the Sun due to measurements of non-gravitational accelerations moving away from the Sun,” he elaborated.
“I predicted that if the object overlapped with 3I/ATLAS at perihelion, by November 30th, the swarm would be about 60,000 km closer to the Sun than 3I/ATLAS.”
“This separation aligns perfectly with the teardrop-shaped anti-caudal extension visible in the new Hubble image.”
Source: www.sci.news
