NASA Just Released the Long-Awaited Photos of the Mysterious Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS

Sometime during the summer this year, a sparkling guest visited our solar system. Nobody knew where it came from. When scientists first caught it whirling around among our stars, all they noticed was that this glowing visitor had a tail that was constantly growing longer. The guest, named 3I/ATLAS, appeared to have ventured out from its home on a leisurely tour of our solar system. But it seemed to be in a rush. Last month, it zipped past Mars and appeared to be moving close to the Sun, showing a mood for bidding a quick farewell. For so many nights, the mysterious visitors kept scientists awake with puzzlement. Where did it come from? Where was it going?

Thankfully, NASA has a Planetary Defense Network, whose dozens of cameras hover in the solar system, keeping an eye on the odd callers, newcomers, and outsiders. Recently, the cameras succeeded in capturing some distant shots of this object: a glowing white dot that is turning millions of heads on social media.

During a live event, NASA scientists revealed that they had not spoken much about 3I/ATLAS before, due to the ongoing government shutdown and federal budget cuts. But ever since this mysterious visitor caught their eye, they anticipated a trove of precious information they could gather from it, about the trajectories of our own solar system as well as clues to neighboring and previously unknown star systems. The photos offer a rare opportunity to witness the glittering interstellar visitor in unprecedented detail. The images, according to NASA, were snapped between late September and early October this year.

The highly anticipated photos depict this object, essentially a comet, reduced to a glowing white dot of light with a tail becoming fainter and fainter as it trails through the solar system, departing to nobody knows where. The comet was first detected in July. At that time, it was just a teardrop-shaped foreigner of dust and gas, flitting about in our solar system, unbeknownst to NASA’s spies that tracked and recorded its every movement. From the very beginning, however, the strange guest appeared to be in a hurry.

On August 27, the comet was observed once again by the Gemini South Telescope in Chile. On October 30th, it was closest to the Sun as it had ever been. While it neared the blazing hot star, NASA’s clever network of satellites, including the sun-watching PUNCH satellites, successfully grabbed some shots of the comet. Various other satellites were also involved in the project, including the Solar and  Heliospheric Observatory, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission, and the Perseverance Rover on the surface of Mars. Also, the European Space Agency (ESA)’s robots stationed around Mars also kept spying on the comet’s movements, reporting information to the scientists sitting below.

While speaking in the live event, Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said the team has pushed their scientific instruments beyond their normal capabilities, beyond the function they were designed to achieve, just to capture some amazing glimpses of this interstellar traveller.

Before its arrival, only two strange objects had been detected in the galaxy, including the cigar-shaped Oumuamua in 2017 and the wolf-like comet 2I/Borisov in 2019. None has been as elusive and gamesome as 3I/ATLAS. When NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya looked at its images, he described it as a “fuzzy white ball." 

Looking ahead, the comet offers a tantalizing prospect to scientists to delve into the mysteries of our neighboring star systems. The goal, hereupon, is to dig out further details of this gleaming slipstreaming guest, including information about its changing appearance, chemical makeup, and, if possible, its place of origin. Before the cute, dazzling tourist says goodbye and disappears into the dark space, we want to know everything we can about it.

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