What is comet 3I/ATLAS? | The Planetary Society

It’s previous

Initial research recommend that 3I/ATLAS could also be between 3 and 14 billion years previous, probably which means that it’s older than the Solar System (which is 4.6 billion years previous). This would additionally make it the oldest comet but seen.

We don’t know the place it got here from

While astronomers can pinpoint the path from which 3I/ATLAS got here into the Solar System, this doesn’t inform them the place within the galaxy it originated. It’s not so simple as tracing a straight line — if this object has been travelling via house for thousands and thousands of years, its trajectory can have been nudged numerous occasions by stars, molecular clouds, even the spiral arms of the galaxy itself. 

What we are able to deduce is that it seemingly began off in orbit round a star. Researchers assume 3I/ATLAS was seemingly flung out of its star system by a detailed encounter with an enormous planet or one other close by star. Observations by the house telescopes JWST and SPHEREx have proven that the comet is wealthy in carbon dioxide, which means that it fashioned removed from its father or mother star, the place temperatures are chilly sufficient for carbon dioxide to grow to be a stable. 

We do know the place it’s going

3I/ATLAS is heading towards the Sun on the time of writing, and can attain perihelion (its closest level to the Sun) round Oct. 29, 2025, at a distance of about 1.4 astronomical items (210 million kilometers, or 130 million miles), simply contained in the orbit of Mars. 

After perihelion, it should go 0.65 astronomical items (97 million kilometers; 60 million miles) from Venus on Nov. 3, 2025. Soon after that, the European Space Agency’s Juice (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) spacecraft that’s en path to Jupiter will try to watch 3I/ATLAS utilizing its cameras, spectrometers, and a particle sensor.