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Everything you might want to find out about 3I/ATLAS
So what’s 3I/ATLAS? And why do people care?
3I/ATLAS, which was first discovered in early July, is the third interstellar object ever found in our solar system. That means it doesn’t come from our cosmic neighbourhood, but from somewhere else in our Milky Way galaxy.
Where exactly in our galaxy the comet came from is unclear — scientists aren’t sure whether or not it got here from the Milky Way’s ‘skinny’ disk or its ‘thick’ disk — however relying on its origins it may very well be greater than 7 billion years previous, making it greater than 3 billion years older than our solar. Tracing 3I/ATLAS’s origins is made much more difficult by the comet’s materials, which has been remodeled by billions of years of publicity to cosmic rays.
Telescope observations counsel the comet is roughly 7-mile-wide (11 kilometers) and zooming at greater than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h). Having handed perihelion, or the closest level to our solar, roughly two weeks in the past, the comet is now zipping towards its closest level to Earth on Dec. 19.
The unique comet has many peculiar properties, from its chemical composition to its giant measurement. This, alongside radio alerts coming from it which can be typical of all comets, has fuelled a frenzy of hypothesis that the 3I/ATLAS is an alien probe.
That’s nearly actually not the case, nevertheless it doesn’t suggest that astronomers aren’t excited to check it. Investigating the comet may yield recent insights into the situations round different stars, our early galaxy, and the huge frontier of interstellar house.
NASA set to share greatest photographs of comet 3I/ATLAS but
Good morning, science followers. We’re again with extra updates on the comet 3I/ATLAS. Following the end of the U.S. government shutdown, we’re seeing reports that NASA is ready to launch among the best-quality photographs but of the comet.
The photographs have been taken by the HiRISE digicam aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and will have considerably higher decision than these by the Hubble Space Telescope on July 21, 2025.
We’re attending to work on what all of this might imply for the rapidly-brightened comet, which is roughly 7-miles (11 kilometers) extensive, greater than 7 billion years previous, and touring at 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) because it sheds its highly-irradiated coma throughout our photo voltaic system.
Ben Turner