Astronomers capture 1st close-up photograph of new interstellar visitor
On July 1, astronomers discovered an object near the orbit of Jupiter that was somewhat peculiar. It had a strange orbit, one that didn't take it around the sun like most asteroids or comets.
Eventually it was confirmed that this object — named 3I/ATLAS, or C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) — was an interstellar visitor.
Now, using the U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, astronomers have captured the first detailed image of this cosmic interloper.
"We look forward to a bounty of new data and insights as this object warms itself on sunlight before continuing its cold, dark journey between the stars," Martin Still, NSF program director for the International Gemini Observatory, said in a statement.
The comet will continue to be visible in large telescopes until September, after which it will be lost in the sun's glare.
Learning more about the comet
"As this is only our third interstellar visitor ever discovered, we're excited to learn about this entirely new class of object," Paul Wiegert, an astronomy professor at Western University, told CBC News in an email.
Astronomers like to study comets and asteroids as they are left over from our solar system's earliest formation and can reveal what conditions were like at the time. Being able to study something from outside of our neighbourhood could potentially provide more knowledge about other star systems.
Current observations suggest the comet is roughly 20 kilometres in diameter, far larger than the previous two interstellar comets astronomers observed passing through our solar system.
The first comet was 'Oumuamua, which had a measly diameter of 200 metres. The second was 2I/Borisov, which was one kilometre in diameter.
The fact that 3I/ATLAS is so large is a boon to astronomers: It makes it easier to study, particularly as it nears Earth. It will make a close approach in December, but poses no threat.
A recent study presented by author Matthew Hopkins at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting 2025 in Durham, England, suggests that this new visitor may be the oldest comet ever seen.
He estimates its origin to be from a part of our galaxy that is home to ancient stars, and says that it could be seven billion years old, far older than our galaxy's 4.5 billion years.
And this new visitor is hustling: when it was discovered, it was travelling at roughly 61 kilometres per second.
How they know it's not from our neighbourhood
Astronomers can determine the origin of comets or asteroids based on their orbits' eccentricity, or how stretched out its path is.
An eccentricity of 0 means it is a perfectly circular orbit. An eccentricity greater than one means the orbit does not circle around the sun, and the higher the value, the more stretched out the orbit.
WATCH | Orbit of third-known interstellar object:
In 3I/ATLAS's case, its orbit is 6.2, which is how astronomers knew that it came from beyond the solar system. For comparison, 'Oumuamua had an eccentricity of 1.2 and 2I/Borisov's eccentricity was 3.6.
Currently, this new comet is still within Jupiter's orbit, roughly 465 million kilometres from Earth. It will make its closest approach to our planet on Dec. 19, at a distance of roughly 270 million kilometres.
It will reach its closet point to the sun on Oct. 30 at a distance of 210 million kilometres, which will be just inside the orbit of Mars.
Though astronomers have quickly learned some things about this newest interloper, they hope to learn more over time.
"This one seems much like a comet from our own solar system. That is, mostly made of ice which has been frozen for billions of years as it wandered the galaxy, but now [is] starting to gently turn to vapour in the light of our sun. This makes 3I/ATLAS look fuzzy with a tail, visible in the image," Wiegert said.
"But we really don't know if it is like one of our comets (which are leftover building block from when the Earth and planets formed) or something completely different."
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Can U.S. Math Research Survive NSF Funding Cuts?
A 72 percent reduction in federal funding is devastating to math research. The American Mathematical Society is offering $1 million in backstop grants—but it's likely not enough. Mathematics research typically requires few materials. To explore the secrets of prime numbers, investigate unimaginable shapes or elucidate other fundamental mysteries of our universe, mathematicians don't usually need special labs and equipment or to pay participants in clinical trials. Instead funding for mathematicians goes toward meetings of the mind—conferences, workshops and institutes where they gather for intensive sessions to work out math's knottiest problems. Funding also supports the stipends of research fellows, postdoctoral scholars and promising early-career mathematicians. But under the Trump administration's National Science Foundation, much of this funding is being revoked or cut—which, according to experts, could be catastrophic for the present and future of the field. In one recent example, the NSF canceled funding for the Association for Women in Mathematics' research symposium in Wisconsin just four business days before the event was set to begin in May. The threat to this event catalyzed the American Mathematical Society to offer $1 million in backstop grants to support programs whose federal funding has been cut or remains in limbo. These grants are meant to provide a financial safety net that will temporarily allow math programs, researchers and departments to continue operating—but it's not a permanent solution. (Disclosure: The author of this article currently has a AAAS Mass Media Fellowship at Scientific American that is sponsored by the American Mathematical Society.) 'The funding cut is severe, and all of mathematics will be impacted,' says Raegan Higgins, president of the Association for Women in Mathematics and a mathematician at Texas Tech University. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] Movies and television shows often portray mathematicians scribbling on chalkboards in seclusion, but that picture is often far from accurate. 'None of us work in isolation,' Higgins says. In fact, mathematicians rely heavily on their ability to gather and discuss ideas with their peers—perhaps even more than researchers in other fields do. For mathematicians, conferences, workshops and research talks are not just opportunities to share research and network but also crucial moments to work out tough problems together with colleagues, pose field-propelling questions and generate new ideas. 'It's a thinking science, [and] it's a communication science, so we rely on being together to share ideas and to move the needle forward,' says Darla Kremer, executive director of the Association for Women in Mathematics. According to John Meier, CEO of the American Mathematical Society, 'the ability of mathematicians to gather and talk with each other is absolutely central to the vitality of the field.' Federal dollars, largely through the NSF, are responsible for a significant portion of math funding. But a lot of that funding is disappearing under the Trump administration. In April NSF staff members were instructed to 'stop awarding all funding actions until further notice.' Over the past 10 years, on average, the NSF has awarded $113 million in grants to mathematics by May 21 of each year. This year the NSF has awarded only $32 million, representing a 72 percent reduction. By this metric, mathematics is one of the most deeply affected subjects, second only to physics, which has seen an 85 percent reduction. The administration is also canceling and freezing funding that it had previously promised to researchers. More than $14 million of funding already promised to mathematics programs was revoked earlier this year, according to an analysis by Scientific American. In response to a request for comment, the National Science Foundation told Scientific American that 'the agency has determined that termination of certain awards is necessary because they are not in alignment with current NSF priorities and/or programmatic goals.' This withdrawal of grants is eroding trust and seeding uncertainty, experts say, and it comes with long-term consequences. Even if funding gets renewed again later, it can be very difficult for halted programs to recover. 'If you have to shut down a lab and mothball it, that actually takes time and effort,' Meier says. 'You can't just walk in two weeks later, flip a switch and have everything running again. You've got to rebuild it.' Even in mathematics, that process of rebuilding is time-intensive and not always possible if the space has been reallocated or the people have moved on. American Mathematical Society leadership fears these cuts will hurt young mathematicians the most. Like in the sciences, the funding cuts are eliminating research experiences and supportive programming for undergraduates, fellowships for graduate students and positions for postdoctoral researchers. Travel funding for conferences is also disappearing, which leaves young researchers to choose between shelling out for airfare and lodging they can't really afford and forgoing major career and research building opportunities. As these opportunities disappear, young mathematicians are beginning to look elsewhere—either to more lucrative jobs in the private sector or to more supportive countries. 'We worry about diminishing opportunities in the United States and people early in their career deciding that maybe there's a more profitable venue for them to pursue mathematics in another country,' Meier says. 'We love good mathematics wherever it arises, but we'd really like to see a lot of it arising in the United States. We think that's very, very important.' The $1 million in backstop grants can't fill the hole left by the more than $14 million in promised funding that has been denied or the more than $80 million in reduced funding so far this year. But it might be enough to keep many projects afloat simply by offering guaranteed access to funds in a turbulent time. 'I think one of the great difficulties that we're dealing with right now is the high level of uncertainty,' Meier says. Some mathematicians, for example, simply don't know whether their projects are still being funded or not. In some applications for the backstop grants, researchers 'basically talk about being ghosted,' Meier explains. 'They say, 'I can't actually verify that we no longer have funding. I can only tell you my program officer [at the NSF] isn't replying to my request for information.'' Meier hopes the grants can provide some backup for programs that aren't sure where they stand with the NSF. Without it, researchers, universities and independent organizations may find themselves facing impossible situations. Do they pay their research assistants, run their conferences and continue to fund travel out of pocket, assuming all the financial risk themselves and hoping the grants come through? Or do they halt their projects, losing valuable momentum and perhaps leaving important stakeholders unpaid for their work? Still, the backstop grants are a one-time offering—not a sustainable source of funding for an imperiled field. 'I really view them as trying to take a little bit of the sharp edges off of the sudden loss of funding, as opposed to anything that could sustain the field long-term,' Meier explains. The effects of the Trump administration's cuts to mathematics research—unlike research on, say, Alzheimer's disease, vaccines or climate change—may not be the most immediately concerning to human health and safety. But experts like Meier say that ignoring the role mathematics plays in that development is shortsighted. As a spokesperson of the NSF itself put it in response to an inquiry about the organization's changing priorities (and as the agency has said on its website), 'Mathematical sciences are crucial to everyday society and play an essential role in the innovation engine that drives the U.S. economy, strengthens national security and enhances quality of life.' And the search for the answers to math's biggest mysteries also seeds development in physics, earth science, biology, technology, and more. Any progress we make on these questions in the future, Meier says, is 'based entirely [on what] we are doing in research mathematics right now.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
The Vera Rubin Observatory could find dozens of interstellar objects
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists and astronomers are racing to study only the third-ever known interstellar visitor to the solar system, but with a powerful new observatory coming online, these enigmatic objects may soon become routine discoveries. A comet, now known as 3I/ATLAS, with 3I short for "third interstellar," sparked immediate excitement on July 1 when it was detected by the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Chile, exhibiting a hyperbolic and highly eccentric orbit. It is the third confirmed interstellar visitor, following 1I'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. But fleeting visits of high-speed guests from outside our solar system are likely to be detected much more regularly now, thanks to the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The Rubin observatory is located on the mountain of Cerro Pachón in Chile, and saw first light in June after a decade of construction. While it is only in its early commissioning phase, in just 10 hours of observations, Rubin discovered 2,104 new asteroids. Its science objectives include understanding the structure and evolution of the universe, mapping the Milky Way and observing transient astronomical events, but it is also set to revolutionize the detection of interstellar objects (ISOs). This is thanks to Rubin's gigantic Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) camera— the largest digital camera ever constructed for astronomy, with a staggering 3.2 gigapixels. LSST will scan giant swaths of the sky at once and observe the entire southern sky every few nights. Due to its wide field, depth, and how frequently it observes the same regions of sky, Rubin is uniquely capable of catching fast, faint objects like 1I/'Oumuamua or 3I/ATLAS. ISOs like 1I/'Oumuamua or 3I/ATLAS move quickly and can easily pass through our sky unnoticed if the sky is not being scanned often and everywhere. Rubin will be looking constantly and broadly, giving astronomers the best chance yet to catch these fleeting visitors, while also being able to detect objects fainter than nearly any ground-based survey before it. Rubin's powerful imaging and automatic image comparison, coupled with an automated alert system — with millions triggered and filtered every night — means it will pick up telltale motion and flag a potential ISO. So how many interstellar objects might Rubin actually detect? The answer varies widely depending on which assumptions scientists use. We are in the early days of detecting ISOs, so it is difficult to estimate how many Rubin is likely to pick up; we know little about their overall frequency, size range, brightness, if they exhibit cometary activity, and how LSST performs. However, a few recent papers on the topic provide some useful context for how many ISOs LSST might be able to detect, depending on a range of variables. In a 2022 paper, Hoover et al. estimate that LSST will detect on the order of between 0.9-1.9 ISOs every year, or around 15 such objects across Rubin's 10-year observational campaign. It notes that these are lower limits, which can be updated when there is more data on the number density and size frequency of interstellar objects. Additionally, Hoover et al. estimate the chances that Rubin will find an ISO reachable by the Comet Interceptor and Bridge mission concepts, which would fly by an interstellar object as it passes through our solar system. These missions would be launched to lurk in wait, ready to intercept and rendezvous with a passing ISO. The researchers concluded that there is just a roughly 0.07% chance that LSST would identify an ISO target available to Comet Interceptor, which has limited capability to change its velocity, while LSST could detect around three to seven ISOs reachable by Bridge, a more capable but yet-to-be-approved mission concept. RELATED STORIES — New interstellar object 3I/ATLAS: Everything we know about the rare cosmic visitor — Vera C Rubin Observatory reveals 1st stunning images of the cosmos. Scientists are 'beyond excited about what's coming' — 'Oumuamua: A guide to the 1st known interstellar visitor Another estimate, from a 2023 paper by Ezell and Loeb, expects LSST to detect one small ISO 3 to 164 feet (1 to 50 meters) wide every one to two years. A more optimistic assessment comes from Marceta and Seligman in a 2023 paper. They find, based on a simulated suite of galactic populations of asteroidal interstellar objects and their trajectories and kinematics, that Rubin should detect between around 0 and 70 asteroidal interstellar objects every year. Again, one of the main factors is how many objects of different sizes actually exist in the population of ISOs, as well as their albedo, or how much light they reflect. With just three confirmed interstellar visitors so far, much remains unknown about the number, size, and diversity of ISOs. But with the Rubin Observatory coming online, sightings of these fast-moving cosmic messengers may soon shift from rare events to regular science, offering unique insights into the galaxy beyond our solar system. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS transforms into a giant 'cosmic rainbow' in trippy new telescope image
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The newly discovered "interstellar visitor" 3I/ATLAS can be seen shining like a rainbow-colored string of cosmic pearls in a trippy new timelapse image captured by a telescope in Hawaii. The interloper was discovered on July 1, and within 24 hours NASA confirmed it was an interstellar object — an ejected piece of an alien star system that is shooting through our cosmic neighborhood. It is only the third object of its kind ever spotted, and is most likely a large comet, stretching up to 15 miles (24 kilometers) across. Initial observations also suggest that it could be up to 3 billion years older than the solar system, potentially making it the oldest comet ever seen. The extrasolar entity is hurtling toward the sun at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h). It will reach its closest point to our home star, or perihelion, in late October, before beginning its long journey back out of the solar system. Therefore, scientists only have a limited time to study the object before it is gone forever. Astronomers at the Gemini North telescope, located on the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano, have been closely watching 3I/ATLAS since its discovery. And on Tuesday (July 15), they released several stunning images, including a close-up shot of the comet's coma — the cloud of ice, gas and dust that surrounds a comet's icy shell — and a technicolor timelapse photo of the interloper moving through space. Related: Watch newly discovered 'interstellar visitor' 3I/ATLAS shoot toward us in first livestream The timelapse photo is a combination of at least 16 different photos taken using three different filters, making the comet appear to shift between blue, red and green hues as it moves across the sky. In reality, the comet gives off a white light, as seen in the coma photo. The photos have helped provide astronomers with "critical early characterization of this interstellar wanderer," Martin Still, the National Science Foundation program director for the International Gemini Observatory, which includes Gemini North and its sister telescope, Gemini South, in the Chilean Andes, said in a statement. "We look forward to a bounty of new data and insights as this object warms itself on sunlight before continuing its cold, dark journey between the stars." 3I/ATLAS Until now, only two other interstellar objects have ever been confirmed: 1I/'Oumuamua, an unusual asteroid discovered in 2017; and 2I/Borisov, a pristine comet spotted in 2019. However, researchers suspect that many more alien interlopers have passed through the solar system unnoticed. 3I/ATLAS is significantly larger than its predecessors and is traveling at a much faster rate. It also originates from a completely different part of the Milky Way than 'Oumuamua or Comet Borisov, making it an intriguing target for future study. Astronomers hope to be able to learn more about the comet's exact origins as the sun starts to melt away its outer icy layers over the coming months, potentially unleashing a gigantic cometary tail that can be studied in great detail by space assets, such as the James Webb Space Telescope. RELATED STORIES —An interstellar object exploded over Earth in 2014, declassified government data reveal —1 million 'interstellar objects' — each larger than the Statue of Liberty — may lurk in the outer solar system —An interstellar visitor may have changed the course of 4 solar system planets, study suggests 3I/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Earth in mid-December, after temporarily disappearing behind the sun in October and November. Its minimum distance from our planet will be around 1.6 times the distance between Earth and the sun, meaning that it "poses no threat" to us, according to NASA. It will remain too distant to be seen by the naked eye, but it is expected to brighten to the point where it can be seen with a decent backyard telescope or pair of stargazing binoculars. The best time to see it for yourself will likely be in early 2026. Solve the daily Crossword