An Interstellar object zipping through our Solar System spotted by the Astronomers.
A newly discovered object speeding through our solar system is sparking excitement among astronomers because it’s not from around here. Believed to be a comet, the object is only the third celestial body from beyond our solar system ever to be observed in our corner of the universe.
This interstellar visitor, now officially named 3I/ATLAS, became known when the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) telescope in Chile reported spotting it on Tuesday. Since then, astronomers reviewing archival observations from multiple telescopes have tracked the object’s movements as far back as June 14 and found that the comet arrived from the direction of the Sagittarius constellation.
The comet’s speed and path through the solar system are two strong indicators that it originated beyond our solar system, said Gianluca Masi, astronomer and astrophysicist at the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy and founder and scientific director of the Virtual Telescope Project. Masi has been making observations of the comet and will stream a live view of the object on the Virtual Telescope Project’s website beginning at 6 p.m. ET Thursday.
The comet is moving at nearly 37 miles per second (60 kilometres per second) — or 133,200 miles per hour (about 214,364 kilometres per hour) — too fast to be a “local” object in our solar system, said Teddy Kareta, an assistant professor at Villanova University near Philadelphia.
“Objects bound to the sun — denizens of our solar system — take paths around it that return to the same point,” Kareta wrote in an email. “The Earth’s orbit is mostly circular, Pluto’s orbit is a stretched oval, and many comets are very highly ‘eccentric’ — their orbits are very long and narrow ellipses. This object’s path through the solar system is very nearly a straight line.”
Tracking the object’s orbit also reveals the path it has taken to reach our solar system, said Dr. Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center of Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “When we extrapolate its motion backwards in time, we see that it clearly originated from outside our Solar System”, Chodas wrote in an email. “It must have originated from another Solar System and probably has been travelling through interstellar space for millions of years until it happened to encounter our Solar System”.
Since the initial sighting of the comet, located 420 million miles (675 million kilometres) from Earth, astronomers have rushed to observe the object with telescopes around the world. One of those astronomers is Kareta, who observed the comet, using the Lowell Observatory’s Lowell Discovery Telescope in Flagstaff, Arizona, as soon as he heard about it on the night of its discovery. He said he believes it will only be a couple of weeks before just about every large telescope on Earth and in space has made time to spot and track the comet.
“People are excited. Almost every planetary astronomer I know immediately ran to a telescope or sent emails requesting telescope (observing) time in the next few days”, said Kareta, formerly a postdoctoral researcher at the Lowell Observatory. “While we might have several months to study this fascinating object, the earlier we can figure out how it works — how it is evolving, what strange or unexpected properties it might have — the quicker we can plan for the rest of its passage through the solar system”.

Anatomy of an interstellar object –
Comet 3I/ATLAS follows two other intriguing interstellar objects, called ISOs, that once passed through our solar system: ‘Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. Both objects, also thought to be interstellar comets, stirred intense interest. The accelerated movements of cigar-shaped ‘Oumuamua even ignited claims that it could be an alien probe. Little is known so far about comet 3I/ATLAS. Astronomers estimate its diameter to be 12 miles (20 kilometres), with significant uncertainty due to the object’s brightness, Masi said.
However, the comet seems to be the brightest and fastest of the three interstellar objects discovered so far, Kareta noted. 3I/ATLAS is approaching our solar system from the Milky Way’s galactic centre, a different direction than the previous objects, Chodas said.
The object has shown signs of cometary activity, including that it appears to be losing mass like a comet. Comets are made of ice, frozen gases and rock, and as they near stars such as the sun, heat causes them to release gas and dust, which creates their signature tails. But it’s not yet clear what kind of material is releasing from 3I/ATLAS or what process is causing it, Kareta said.
“Considering the lingering disagreements about what caused the orbital acceleration of the first ISO ‘Oumuamua, I’d be surprised if diagnosing and understanding this wasn’t a priority for most”, Kareta wrote in an email. “We don’t know where (3I/ATLAS) came from yet, but as our understanding of the object’s orbit (increases) we might be able to make some good guesses in a few months”.
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