NASA releases numerous images of interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas
NASA yesterday released a slew of images of interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas, taken by numerous in-space probes at Mars and elsewhere.
The picture to the right, cropped to post here, is probably the one with the most detail, taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) from Mars orbit on October 2, 2025. In addition, images were captured by:
- The solar probe Stereo
- The solar probe Soho
- The solar probe Punch
- The Perseverance rover on the Martian surface
- The Maven Mars orbiter
- The asteroid probe Lucy on its way to Jupiter
None of these pictures show the comet in any great detail. All however confirm once again that it is a comet, not an interstellar alien spacecraft as some idiots in academia have been proposing wildly. The Maven observations in ultra-violet wavelengths for example identified hydrogen and other isotopes coming off the comet as it is heated by the Sun. MRO’s image to the right once again showed the comet’s coma and tail.
Above all, these observations were great engineering experiments for all the science teams, demonstrating that they could point their instruments in an unplanned direction and capture a very faint object quite far away.
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
NASA yesterday released a slew of images of interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas, taken by numerous in-space probes at Mars and elsewhere.
The picture to the right, cropped to post here, is probably the one with the most detail, taken by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) from Mars orbit on October 2, 2025. In addition, images were captured by:
- The solar probe Stereo
- The solar probe Soho
- The solar probe Punch
- The Perseverance rover on the Martian surface
- The Maven Mars orbiter
- The asteroid probe Lucy on its way to Jupiter
None of these pictures show the comet in any great detail. All however confirm once again that it is a comet, not an interstellar alien spacecraft as some idiots in academia have been proposing wildly. The Maven observations in ultra-violet wavelengths for example identified hydrogen and other isotopes coming off the comet as it is heated by the Sun. MRO’s image to the right once again showed the comet’s coma and tail.
Above all, these observations were great engineering experiments for all the science teams, demonstrating that they could point their instruments in an unplanned direction and capture a very faint object quite far away.
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


Avi Loeb Responds to Brian Cox & Talks 3i/Atlas
Brian Keating Podcast (Nov. 14, 2025)
https://youtu.be/KQ_iMlqgtS0
1:43:37
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/3i-atlas-update-amateur-footage-captures-spinning-motion-before-nasa-event-1756526
We’ve known for some time that 3I/ATLAS has a 16.16 hour rotation rate. Little beyond that and the spectrum can be extracted from reflected light from its ~3-km cometary nucleus, however. Even when it passed Mars last month (at a distance of no less than about 30 million km, or 20 million miles), “3I’s” angular width in the martian sky was a mere ~0.02 arc-seconds. Note that even the Hubble space telescope (which circles earth not Mars) has an effective resolution limit of about 0.05 arc-seconds, and thus couldn’t have resolved 3I’s nucleus (if it had been at Mars) to even a single pixel (a featureless point of light); meanwhile (e.g.) Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO)’s—which is at Mars—resolution is (naturally) much worse at 0.3 seconds of arc, thus falling more than an order of magnitude shy of being able to garner even 1 pixel. Of course, except for (possibly) obtaining the rotation rate, single pixel (if that) “pics” are fundamentally useless.
Things will be even worse when 3I passes during its closest approach to earth next month—when the comet at its nearest will swing by still nearly 270 million km away—about 9 times further than its Mars passage, or almost twice earth’s distance to the sun.
The upshot is that no human telescope is capable of capturing any pictorial information about 3I’s nucleus at all. All that is and will be visible is its extended ethereal cometary show—i.e., sun-illuminated vapor boiled off the nucleus. Enjoy the show! Because that’s all anyone will ever see of 3I/ATLAS.