The Hubble Space Telescope has taken its initial shots of comet 3I/ATLAS, a comet visiting us from beyond our solar system that recently fell apart — but not before it struck a pose for the cameras. It’s only the third such object ever known, after 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. The subject of…
In early July 2025, astronomers announced comet 3I/ATLAS, first observed on July 1 by a Chilean telescope in NASA’s ATLAS network, is an interstellar visitor with a hyperbolic orbit. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) imaged the comet on July 3 with its FORS2 camera, capturing the clearest views yet. These observations confirm…
A rare interstellar object has been spotted in our solar system, making it the second known object to cross over from outside our cosmic neighbourhood and arrive near our planet. 3I/ATLAS is seen here while about 290 million miles (465 million kilometres) from Earth, when it was journeying inbound on its trip to our vicinity…