This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you may go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.space.com/astronomy/comets/interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-is-leaking-water-like-a-fire-hose-running-at-full-blast-new-study-finds
and if you wish to take away this text from our web site please contact us
A rocky customer from past our photo voltaic system is leaking water like a “fire hose running at full blast,” a brand new examine experiences.
Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, scientists have for the primary time detected the chemical fingerprint of water spilling from interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, solely the third identified object from one other star system ever noticed passing by way of our cosmic neighborhood.
Water is the universal yardstick of comet science, the baseline for measuring how sunlight drives a comet’s activity and releases other gases. Detecting it in an interstellar visitor allows astronomers to compare 3I/ATLAS directly with comets native to our solar system, offering a rare glimpse into the chemistry of distant planetary systems.
“When we detect water — or even its faint ultraviolet echo, OH — from an interstellar comet, we’re reading a note from another planetary system,” study co-author Dennis Bodewits, a professor of physics at Auburn University, said in a statement. “It tells us that the ingredients for life’s chemistry are not unique to our own.”
‘At a distance where we didn’t expect it’
Using the Swift telescope, Bodewits and his team observed 3I/ATLAS in July and August 2025, when it was about 2.9 times farther from the sun than Earth — well beyond the region where water ice typically vaporizes.
From this distance, Swift detected the faint ultraviolet glow of hydroxyl (OH), the product of water molecules broken apart by sunlight, the study reports. To tease out the delicate signal, astronomers stacked dozens of short, three-minute exposures, combining more than two hours of ultraviolet observations and 40 minutes in visible light.
The result, detailed in a paper printed Sept. 30 within the Astrophysical Journal Letters, confirmed that 3I/ATLAS was dropping water at a fee of roughly 40 kilograms per second, or “roughly the output of a fire hose running at full blast.”
Based on that outflow fee, the staff estimates that not less than 8% of the comet’s floor should be lively, a surprisingly massive fraction in contrast with the three% to five% sometimes seen in comets from our personal photo voltaic system, the examine notes.
That stage of exercise, the researchers say, might come not from its strong floor, however by icy particles drifting round it. Near-infrared observations from Gemini South and NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility trace at chunks of ice floating within the coma, the cloud of fuel and dirt surrounding the nucleus. Once uncovered to daylight, these clumps are warmed up and act like miniature steam vents in area, releasing water vapor regardless that the comet itself stays too chilly for its floor ice to sublimate straight, the researchers say.
“Every interstellar comet so far has been a surprise,” Zexi Xing, a postdoctoral researcher at Auburn University in Alabama who led the brand new examine, stated in the identical assertion. “‘Oumuamua was dry, Borisov was rich in carbon monoxide, and now ATLAS is giving up water at a distance where we didn’t expect it. Each one is rewriting what we thought we knew about how planets and comets form around stars.”
3I/ATLAS has since pale from Swift’s view, however was spotted again in early October by the European Space Agency’s Mars orbiters because it handed about 30 million kilometers from Mars. The company stated it can proceed following the interstellar customer; in November, it plans to show its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) towards 3I/ATLAS.
JUICE will observe the comet simply after its closest strategy to the solar, when it is anticipated to be at its most lively, and is prone to have the very best view of this motion, the company stated.
Because JUICE is at present positioned on the far facet of the solar and sending knowledge by way of a slower backup antenna, scientists do not anticipate to obtain its comet observations till February 2026.
This web page was created programmatically, to learn the article in its unique location you may go to the hyperlink bellow:
https://www.space.com/astronomy/comets/interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-is-leaking-water-like-a-fire-hose-running-at-full-blast-new-study-finds
and if you wish to take away this text from our web site please contact us
