New images, mysteries of 3I Atlas UPDATE! Stranger than Oumuamua
"New images, mysteries of 3I Atlas UPDATE! Stranger than Oumuamua
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#techmap #techmaps #elonmusk #starshipspacex
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3I ATLAS’s First glimpse 0:00
Alien technology 6:32
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New images, mysteries of 3I Atlas UPDATE! Stranger than Oumuamua
If you follow literary news, you must have heard the name 3I Atlas recently. This strange interstellar object was discovered on July 1st by the NASA-funded Atlas robotic telescope. And now, on July 21st, Hubble spots interstellar invader Comet 3I Atlas for the first time
As you can see in the Hubble image, there is a bright, puffy cloud around the comet’s center called the ""coma."" This coma is made of gas and dust coming off the comet as it heats up near the Sun. The comet’s icy core is releasing this material, which creates the glowing cloud visible in the picture. Some streaks on the image are caused by cosmic rays hitting the camera, but they do not hide the comet's shape. Despite some streaks, the overall image quality is high, allowing scientists to study the comet with great clarity. This image helps scientists understand what the comet is made of and how it behaves as it moves through our solar system. The fact that the comet has this big, fuzzy coma shows it is very active, like other comets we have seen, but this one comes from outside our solar system, making it very special and rare.
New images, mysteries of 3I Atlas UPDATE! Stranger than Oumuamua
In addition, there is also an interesting point: a slight elongation along the object's direction of travel. However, this elongation is not evidence of its cometary tail, but is due to multiplying the object's 60 km/s speed by the telescope's 100-second exposure time. The result of this exposure time and the 3I Atlas's speed gives a scale of about 6,000 km, comparable to the radius of the Earth.
More weird, spectroscopic data on 3I Atlas have not revealed spectral features of cometary gas. When scientists use spectroscopy to study 3I Atlas, they shine light through the comet’s gas and dust and look at the colors (or spectrum) that come out. Normally, comets show specific colors in their spectra caused by gases like water vapor, carbon dioxide, or other chemicals. These colors reveal what gases the comet is releasing.
But in the case of 3I Atlas, the spectroscopic data don’t show any of these usual gas signatures. Instead, the data mainly show sunlight bouncing off lots of dust or maybe the comet’s solid surface, like a dusty snowball reflecting light. This is strange because typical comets have visible gas emissions when near the Sun.
New images, mysteries of 3I Atlas UPDATE! Stranger than Oumuamua
So, the unusual lack of gas signatures makes 3I Atlas an odd and mysterious object to scientists, raising questions about its nature and origin.
Interestingly, Hubble wasn’t actually the first to snap images of this object. That credit goes to the Rubin Observatory, which happened to capture high-resolution shots of 3I Atlas, making them the earliest and most detailed images we’ve seen so far. Scientists were able to dig up detections of the object from Rubin’s observations between June 21 and July 7, 2025, starting 10 days before it was even discovered.
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