Early 2026 Update: James Webb Telescope Reveals What Happened When the Sun Cracked Open 3I/ATLAS...

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Early 2026 Update: James Webb Telescope Reveals What Happened When the Sun Cracked Open 3I/ATLAS...

One of the biggest breakthroughs actually came from the Hubble Space Telescope. For months, the solid core of 3I/ATLAS its nucleus was completely hidden behind a thick cloud of gas and dust called the coma. That made it incredibly hard for astronomers to figure out how big the object really was.
But by carefully comparing images taken between December 2025 and January 2026, and using some clever image-processing techniques, scientists finally managed to glimpse the nucleus itself. The new measurements suggest it’s about 1.3 kilometers wide in radius or roughly 2.6 kilometers across.

Other studies backed this up by looking at how the comet’s path slightly shifts due to non-gravitational forces (like gas jets pushing on it), and by studying how its brightness changes as it spins. There is one small caveat, though: these size estimates assume the comet’s surface is as dark as most comets in our solar system. If it reflects light differently, the true size could be a bit off.
What’s even more fascinating is its shape. It doesn’t appear to be round at all. Instead, it seems stretched out, with a shape roughly twice as long as it is wide. That makes it more elongated than most small bodies in our solar system though not as extreme as the famous interstellar object ʻOumuamua. In short, 3I/ATLAS looks like a long, uneven space rock rather than a neat little sphere.
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