New Interstellar Object Comet 3I/ATLAS—What We Know So Far as It Zips through the Solar System
A new interstellar object stuns scientists because it zoom in on the solar system
All eyes are on 3i / Atlas comet while astronomers around the world continue the exotic ice ball through our solar system
A diagram shows the trajectory of the interstellar comet 3i / Atlas when it goes through the solar system. He will make his approach closest to the sun in October.
Late in the evening of July 1, a telescope in Chile which is part of the latest alert system (Atlas), a new moving point in the sky, an object passing in front of the orbit of Jupiter. When Larry Denneau, Atlas software engineer, alerted the minor planet center of the international astronomical union with observation, “it looked like a completely routine discovery,” he said. It would change soon. To his surprise, the object – namely named A11PI3z – was deemed the third known interstellar visitor to science.
Now, a few days after its discovery, the monitoring work frequented by astronomers from around the world to examine more A11PI3z and seek additional appearances in archival observations have given the object a new more official name – arrive 3i / Atlas – for the telescope which discovered it for the first time. What seems to have been the evidence of hooking of its interstellar nature emerged from the efforts of a group of amateur astronomers, called the Deep Random Survey, which was the first to follow the object in images that other Atlas telescopes had captured at the end of June.
“We had a lot of confusion from the start,” explains Sam Deen, member of the group. “Our systems are generally set to expect a new discovery to be an object firmly stuck inside the solar system”, but 3i / Atlas played outside these rules. Previous observations – which also understood the observations of “predisory” of Zwicky’s transitional installation at the Palomar Observatory in the County of San Diego, California, as well as other telescopes – have experienced a more precise calculation of the 3I / Atlas trajectory. Be that as it may, the object zoomed towards the inner solar system at almost 70 kilometers per second, compared to the sun.
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It is “much faster than any object of the solar system should be able to move,” notes Deen, because these speeds guarantee that the objects will pass through the gravitational socket of the sun. Anything that moves so quickly, just can’t hang around for a long time; Rather than following a typical parabolic orbit, the 3i / Atlas blister speed is cutting a hyperbolic orbit, a path that takes the object that crosses the inner solar system before it goes back to the interstellar void. It most likely comes from the periphery of another planetary system, where it was ejected from its tenuous shooting around an extraterrestrial sun by gravitational interactions with a giant planet or another passing star. Exactly where he comes from and when he started his galactic trip, however, no one can say.
There is no threat to the earth: during its brief stay in the 3i / Atlas solar system, should be closer to 240 million kilometers from our planet. The object will make its approach closest to the sun around October 30, reaching a distance of around 210 million kilometers, just in the orbit of Mars. As the coming months approach, astronomers will intensify their studies, hoping to know more about this mysterious visitor.
What is already relatively clear, however, is the cometary nature of 3i / Atlas; More than 100 observations have now sank telescopes from around the world, including some that show that the object is wrapped in a cloud of gas and dust and dragging a debris tail like ice on its hot surface in the sun’s radiation. Astronomers normally use the brightness of a distant object as an indirect indicator for its size, with more shiny objects which also tend to be larger. But the ejected material of a comet is generally brilliant also, which interferes with such raw estimates.
Therefore, “at the moment, we really do not know how great it is; This could be five to 50 kilometers in diameter, ”explains Denneau. Closer looks with more powerful observatories, including the lively and infrared space telescope, should soon help clarify the dimensions and composition of 3i / Atlas.
“I am interested whether the comet looks like objects of our own solar system,” explains Denneau. “The answer is interesting in both cases. If it has the same composition as a normal comet, it means that other solar systems can be constructed in a similar way to ours. If it is completely different, then we could wonder why.”
The first interstellary object observed, 1i / ‘Oumuamua, appeared on the stage in 2017 and perplexed researchers with its strangely elongated shape and its strangely accelerated trajectory. These strange characteristics have led some researchers to offer an idea – now convincingly demystified – that Ouamua was a foreign spacecraft abandoned at the drift of the Milky Way. Then, in 2019, came the second interstellar object observed, 2i / Borisov, which bore all the characteristics of an ordinary and inspired comet, if not, if not, bizarre allegations of extraterrestrial involvement.
“”[Comet 3I/ATLAS] Will be a sort of equality in a way, “explains Mario Juri & Cacute; A astronomer at Washington University and discovery software at the VERA C. Rubin Observatory recently completed in Chile.”[Will it] Giving us a sense of omuamua was the strangest, or is the universe much more interesting than we imagined? “”
Rubin – A unique telescope with a panoramic view that will study the whole air sky every few days – is considered particularly critical to resolve the persistent mysteries of these first emissaries of the interstellar space. As the observatory’s investigation progresses in the months and years to come, it should discover many more visitors to the big beyond, allowing astronomers to start studying them as a population rather than dispersed and isolated.
In the end, if Rubin or another installation manages to identify an interstellar object ready to pass against the land relatively close to the earth, astronomers could even have an extremely close view via a space meeting. The European Space Agency (ESA) already has such a mission in progress, in fact, Interceptor, a Sentinel spacecraft which should be launched in 2029 to wait for an incoming comet or another object. “There is a small chance that Comet Interceptor be able to visit an interstellar object if we are on the right trajectory, and the New Vera C. Rubin observatory should give us an increased rate of discovery of these objects,” explains Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer from the University of Edinburgh, which is part of the ESA mission.
All this has astronomers on the edge of their siege, eager to dive deeper into a new border in our cosmic understanding. “It is probably the most excited that I have been about any astronomical discovery for years,” explains Deen.
