Comet 3I/ATLAS gallery: See NASA’s long-awaited images of interstellar visitor
NASA has released a treasure trove of comet 3I/ATLAS images, giving us some of the closest views yet of the interstellar visitor.
The U.S. government shutdown, which lasted from October 1 to November 12, delayed the release of the highly anticipated images, which include shots taken by instruments around Mars and the Sun in recent months.
The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) captured this image of the comet from its edge. NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The imager spotted comet 3I/ATLAS as it flew past Mars in early October.
Even though the comet was much closer to Mars in October than it ever will be to Earth, it still wasn’t that close. This image was taken when the comet was about 30 million kilometers from MRO. For reference, the average distance between the Moon and Earth is approximately 239,000 miles (384,000 km). The bright dot represents the comet’s main body, or core, while the diffuse cloud of particles surrounding it is the 3I/ATLAS coma – a characteristic feature of most comets that are heated by the sun as they pass through our solar system.
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) orbiter obtained this trippy ultraviolet image of comet 3I/ATLAS near Mars (relatively speaking) on September 28. MAVEN’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph takes advantage of the ultraviolet part of the light spectrum to decipher the chemical composition of objects, according to NASA.
The blue in the image is hydrogen. The blue dot on the left represents hydrogen emitted by comet 3I/ATLAS, while the bright blue on the right represents hydrogen emitted by Mars. The pale blue oval in the middle represents background hydrogen circulating through the solar system between planets. Researchers hope to use observations like this to better understand the comet’s composition.
NASA released this GIF of Comet 3I/ATLAS, created from images taken by the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission between September 28 and October 10. The PUNCH mission is made up of four small satellites in low Earth orbit, focused on the sun. Comet 3I/ATLAS is the white dot in the central image, moving through a stream of blurry light from the stars. The bright spot passing in front of the comet is Mars.
Comet 3I/ATLAS looks pretty pink in this observation, thanks to colorized images from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO-A) spacecraft. The Heliocentric Imager-1 (H1) instrument aboard STEREO-A captured the visible-light image, which was then colorized to differentiate it from other images from the spacecraft, according to NASA.
Another image taken by a solar orbiter, this time from the European Space Agency and NASA’s Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). The SOHO mission was launched in 1995 and is the oldest solar satellite to date, according to NASA. SOHO took this image of comet 3I/ATLAS between October 15 and 26, while the comet lit up en route to its closest encounter with the sun.
This latest GIF isn’t particularly impressive to look at, but it was taken from the Martian surface, which is pretty cool if you ask us. NASA’s Perseverance rover looked up to observe the comet flying near the Red Planet on October 4. Perseverance was investigating Jezero Crater at the time, looking for ancient signs of life.
Since the discovery of comet 3I/ATLAS in July, there was widespread speculation that this interstellar visitor could be a alien spaceship. However, most astronomers are convinced that 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet from a unknown star system. NASA was keen to emphasize that the comet was of natural origin when it presented the new images during a broadcast on Wednesday (November 19).
“This object is a comet,” says NASA’s associate administrator. Amit Kshatriya » said during the stream. “It looks and behaves like a comet…and all the evidence points to it being a comet. But this one comes from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting and scientifically very important.”
