Gemini South telescope captures Comet 3I/Atlas’s growing tail
Click for original image.
Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers have taken new images of interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas as it moves through the solar system, this time capturing the slow growth of its tail.
The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows that tail trailing off to the left. The stars are streaks because it required four exposures in different wavelengths to produce the image. The comet was held steady while the stars shifted after each exposure.
In the images captured during the session, the comet displays a broad coma — a cloud of gas and dust that forms around the comet’s icy nucleus as it gets closer to the Sun — and a tail spanning about 1/120th of a degree in the sky (where one degree is about the width of a pinky finger on an outstretched arm) and pointing away from the Sun. These features are significantly more extended than they appeared in earlier images of the comet, showing that 3I/ATLAS has become more active as it travels through the inner Solar System.
So far, all the evidence continues to show that though 3I/Atlas has an interstellar origin, it is a relatively ordinary comet, simply unique in the manner all objects of a category are unique. As the scientists pour over the comet’s spectroscopy we might find its make-up is somewhat different than comets from our own solar system, but the data so far suggests that the differences are not likely to be that startling.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for original image.
Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers have taken new images of interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas as it moves through the solar system, this time capturing the slow growth of its tail.
The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows that tail trailing off to the left. The stars are streaks because it required four exposures in different wavelengths to produce the image. The comet was held steady while the stars shifted after each exposure.
In the images captured during the session, the comet displays a broad coma — a cloud of gas and dust that forms around the comet’s icy nucleus as it gets closer to the Sun — and a tail spanning about 1/120th of a degree in the sky (where one degree is about the width of a pinky finger on an outstretched arm) and pointing away from the Sun. These features are significantly more extended than they appeared in earlier images of the comet, showing that 3I/ATLAS has become more active as it travels through the inner Solar System.
So far, all the evidence continues to show that though 3I/Atlas has an interstellar origin, it is a relatively ordinary comet, simply unique in the manner all objects of a category are unique. As the scientists pour over the comet’s spectroscopy we might find its make-up is somewhat different than comets from our own solar system, but the data so far suggests that the differences are not likely to be that startling.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“Is 3I/ATLAS Alien Tech?” Avi Loeb & Michael Shermer Discuss
Into the Impossible Podcast w/ Brian Keating (9-4-2025)
https://youtu.be/ZZQ8v9URPxY
1:31:40
So can we now safely assume, contrary to all the videos by so-called experts on Youtube, that this is not an alien spacecraft, a god like being in the guise of an elongated rock whom we contact at our peril, the starship Enterprise, or a malevolent entity bent on enslaving us and using us as a food source? Just wondering so I can finally get some sleep at nights.