Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was almost called 3I/Rubin, after researchers found that the giant survey telescope coincidentally spotted this visitor from the stars over a week before it was officially discovered.
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“Each interstellar comet brings a little bit of its history, its fossils, from elsewhere.”
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS changed significantly as it flew by the sun last fall, astronomers have discovered.
The Jupiter-bound spacecraft JUICE spotted the interstellar invader comet 3I/ATLAS spraying enough water into space to fill 70 swimming pools a day.
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A rare long-period comet is here — here’s how to find comet C/2025 R3 (PanSTARRS) before sunrise this April, with key dates, viewing tips and the best mornings to look.
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A dramatic breakup near the sun erased hopes of a bright comet lighting up the evening sky this week.
Our solar system’s famous “invader” might be as old as the Milky Way itself.
The unprecedented observations of comet 41P/Tuttle–Giacobini–Kresák show its rotation slowing, reversing and then speeding up, and jet-like outbursts of gas might be providing the push.
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Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that the spinning of a small comet slowed and then reversed its direction of rotation, offering a dramatic example of how volatile activity can affect the spin and physical evolution of small bodies in the solar system. This is the first time researchers have observed evidence […]
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will soon leave our solar system, never to return, but the observations of the comet will live on in NASA’s public data archives. More than a dozen NASA science missions turned their instruments to observe the comet, which is only the third identified object to be visiting our solar system from […]