Latest news with #HubbleTelescope
Daily Mail
13 hours ago
- Science
- Daily Mail
NASA gives chilling update on the mysterious 'interstellar object' racing through our solar system - as Hubble Space Telescope provides fresh evidence on exactly how big it is
NASA has issued a chilling update on the mysterious 'interstellar object' racing through our solar system. The visitor from another star, dubbed 3I/ATLAS, was first spotted on July 1 as it reached 420 million miles from the sun. Now, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured the sharpest images ever taken of 3I/ATLAS as it makes its way into the inner solar system. These groundbreaking images reveal that 3I/ATLAS is moving at a staggering speed of 130,000 miles per hour (209,000 km/h) – making it the fastest interstellar object ever detected. Using Hubble's observations, astronomers have also been able to make a new estimate for the size of the object's icy core. Previously, scientists at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory estimated that the alien comet was roughly seven miles (11.2 km) across. We now know that 3I/ATLAS is at most 3.5 miles (5.6 km) wide and possibly as small as 1,000 feet (320 metres). However, that would still make 3I/ATLAS the largest interstellar object ever found, and up to 14 times larger than the second–biggest. Scientists and space agencies around the world are now almost certain that the object 3I/ATLAS is a comet rather than a solid piece of rock. That means it is a relatively small lump of ice, frozen gases, and dust surrounded by a large cloud of evaporating material, which grows as it approaches the heat of the sun. When objects are extremely far away, scientists estimate their size by how much light they reflect. However, astronomers weren't initially sure whether 3I/ATLAS was a very large but dull space rock or a smaller and highly reflective comet surrounded by bright gases. Now, thanks to Hubble's observations, we can see the tell–tale glow of a frozen comet and get a good estimate of its true size. Hubble's image reveals a dust plume streaming out of the sun–warmed side of the comet and the hint of a tail stretching out behind. This amount of dust loss matches what scientists find in other comets around 300 million miles from the sun. As 3I/ATLAS gets closer to the sun and becomes even warmer, the tail and dust plumes should also grow more pronounced. It will reach its closest point to the sun in late October at a distance of 130 million miles (210 million km), passing just inside the orbit of Mars. Thankfully, the object poses no threat whatsoever to Earth and will be on the opposite side of the sun during this close encounter. This is only the third time that scientists have managed to detect an object approaching from another star system, and astronomers are working hard to gather as much data as they can while it is still here. Science team leader for the Hubble observations, Dr David Jewitt, of the University of California, says: 'No one knows where the comet came from. It's like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. 'You can't project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started on its path.' 3I/ATLAS' extreme speed relative to the sun also confirms that it has likely been travelling through the cosmos for many billions of years. As the comet passed planets, stars, and nebulae, the 'gravitational slingshot effect' added to its momentum. The longer an object spends drifting through space, the faster it will become. Previous studies have suggested that 3I/ATLAS is likely to be at least eight billion years old, making it the oldest comet ever seen. That means the comet is potentially twice as old as our 4.6 billion–year–old solar system. 3I/ATLAS follows just two other interstellar objects, 1I/'Oumuamua, which was discovered in 2017, and 2I/Borisov in 2019. However, researchers believe that recent advances in telescope technology mean we will soon start spotting more interstellar visitors. Dr Jewitt says: 'This latest interstellar tourist is one of a previously undetected population of objects bursting onto the scene that will gradually emerge. 'This is now possible because we have powerful sky survey capabilities that we didn't have before. We've crossed a threshold.' Hubble is just the first powerful space telescope lined up to observe 3I/ATLAS' journey through our stellar neighbourhood, with the James Webb Space Telescope, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory all scheduled to make observations. 3I/ATLAS should remain visible to ground–based telescopes through September, after which it will pass too close to the Sun to observe, and is expected to reappear on the other side of the Sun by early December.
CNN
4 days ago
- Science
- CNN
Hubble offers sharp new view of interstellar comet
AstronomyFacebookTweetLink Follow A new image has revealed the clearest glimpse yet of an interstellar visitor zipping through our solar system. The Hubble Telescope and its Wide Field Camera 3 got an incredible view of the comet named 3I/ATLAS, which came from beyond our solar system, on July 21 when the object was 277 million miles (445 million kilometers) from Earth. In the image, a teardrop-shaped dust cocoon can be seen streaking from the comet's icy nucleus. A comet's nucleus is its solid core, made of ice, dust and rocks. When comets travel near stars such as the sun, heat causes them to release gas and dust, which creates their signature tails. The venerable telescope is just one of many that are being used to track the comet, first discovered on July 1, as it zooms at a blistering 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) per hour. Its speed makes 3I/ATLAS the fastest object that originated outside of our solar system to ever be observed traveling through it. New observations, like those made with Hubble, are shedding more light on the comet's size. The small nucleus, which cannot be directly seen, could be as large as 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in diameter or as small as 1,000 feet (305 meters) across, according to a new paper accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Meanwhile, other space-based telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, along with ground-based observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, could reveal more about the object's chemical composition. The comet is expected to remain visible to ground-based telescopes through September before passing too close to the sun to be spotted until it reappears on the other side of our star in early December. But big questions about 3I/ATLAS remain, some of which may be impossible to answer — including where exactly it came from. 'No one knows where the comet came from. It's like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. You can't project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started on its path,' said lead study author David Jewitt, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a statement. While the comet appears to behave like those that originated in our solar system — as evidenced by that dust plume Hubble captured — the speed of 3I/ATLAS is one indicator that it's a visitor from another solar system in our galaxy. Scientists estimate it has been traveling through interstellar space for billions of years. As objects travel through space, they experience a gravitational slingshot effect from whizzing by stars and stellar nurseries that increases their momentum. So the longer 3I/ATLAS has spent in space, the faster it moves. The comet is only the third known interstellar object to have been observed in our solar system after 'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. '3I in particular is remarkable due to its velocity,' said Matthew Hopkins, a recent doctoral student in the department of physics at the University of Oxford who authored a separate study about the object. 'This velocity is very useful to us in particular as over the last few years me and my coauthors have been building a model that allows us to predict properties of (interstellar objects) such as their age and composition, just from their velocity.' For Hopkins, the discovery of 3I/ATLAS was incredibly fortuitous. The find occurred just five days after he finished his doctoral work, which involved a lot of time spent making predictions about future interstellar object discoveries. In a few months, he'll begin a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where he'll continue to research 3I/ATLAS. During his doctoral studies, Hopkins and his collaborators in New Zealand developed the Ōtautahi–Oxford model, a combination of data from the Milky Way's star population and models of how planetary systems form that could help astronomers determine what interstellar object populations should look like. Now, Hopkins is the lead author of a separate preprint study about 3I/ATLAS. It's difficult to determine the age of interstellar objects, but Hopkins and his colleagues believe 3I/ATLAS has about a 67% chance of being more than 7.6 billion years old — while our sun, solar system and its comets are only 4.5 billion years old, he said. It's pure chance that the interstellar comet crossed into our solar system — but it's not entirely rare, Hopkins said. We just don't see these visitors most of the time. '(Interstellar objects) actually pass through the Solar System all the time, especially the smaller ones which are more numerous: 80 the size of 'Oumuamua (about 656 feet, or 200 meters, across) pass through the orbit of Jupiter every year, they're just too small to detect unless they get very close to the Earth,' Hopkins wrote in an email. However, astronomers are eager to have the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which released its first images this summer, scanning the skies for interstellar the observatory's massive primary mirror spanning 28 feet (8.4 meters) across, it can spot small, faint and distant objects — and it's scanning the entire sky every three nights, allowing the telescope to better catch sight of rapidly moving interstellar objects. Hopkins' coauthors estimate that Rubin could spy anywhere between five and 50 interstellar objects over the next 10 years, and Hopkins is optimistically leaning toward the latter. Discovering more interstellar objects could help astronomers determine how varied or similar they are, especially since the first three have been so different from one another, Hopkins said. 'This latest interstellar tourist is one of a previously undetected population of objects bursting onto the scene that will gradually emerge,' Jewitt said. 'This is now possible because we have powerful sky survey capabilities that we didn't have before. We've crossed a threshold.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
4 days ago
- Science
- CNN
Hubble offers sharp new view of interstellar comet
AstronomyFacebookTweetLink A new image has revealed the clearest glimpse yet of an interstellar visitor zipping through our solar system. The Hubble Telescope and its Wide Field Camera 3 got an incredible view of the comet named 3I/ATLAS, which came from beyond our solar system, on July 21 when the object was 277 million miles (445 million kilometers) from Earth. In the image, a teardrop-shaped dust cocoon can be seen streaking from the comet's icy nucleus. A comet's nucleus is its solid core, made of ice, dust and rocks. When comets travel near stars such as the sun, heat causes them to release gas and dust, which creates their signature tails. The venerable telescope is just one of many that are being used to track the comet, first discovered on July 1, as it zooms at a blistering 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) per hour. Its speed makes 3I/ATLAS the fastest object that originated outside of our solar system to ever be observed traveling through it. New observations, like those made with Hubble, are shedding more light on the comet's size. The small nucleus, which cannot be directly seen, could be as large as 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in diameter or as small as 1,000 feet (305 meters) across, according to a new paper accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Meanwhile, other space-based telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, along with ground-based observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, could reveal more about the object's chemical composition. The comet is expected to remain visible to ground-based telescopes through September before passing too close to the sun to be spotted until it reappears on the other side of our star in early December. But big questions about 3I/ATLAS remain, some of which may be impossible to answer — including where exactly it came from. 'No one knows where the comet came from. It's like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. You can't project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started on its path,' said lead study author David Jewitt, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a statement. While the comet appears to behave like those that originated in our solar system — as evidenced by that dust plume Hubble captured — the speed of 3I/ATLAS is one indicator that it's a visitor from another solar system in our galaxy. Scientists estimate it has been traveling through interstellar space for billions of years. As objects travel through space, they experience a gravitational slingshot effect from whizzing by stars and stellar nurseries that increases their momentum. So the longer 3I/ATLAS has spent in space, the faster it moves. The comet is only the third known interstellar object to have been observed in our solar system after 'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. '3I in particular is remarkable due to its velocity,' said Matthew Hopkins, a recent doctoral student in the department of physics at the University of Oxford who authored a separate study about the object. 'This velocity is very useful to us in particular as over the last few years me and my coauthors have been building a model that allows us to predict properties of (interstellar objects) such as their age and composition, just from their velocity.' For Hopkins, the discovery of 3I/ATLAS was incredibly fortuitous. The find occurred just five days after he finished his doctoral work, which involved a lot of time spent making predictions about future interstellar object discoveries. In a few months, he'll begin a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where he'll continue to research 3I/ATLAS. During his doctoral studies, Hopkins and his collaborators in New Zealand developed the Ōtautahi–Oxford model, a combination of data from the Milky Way's star population and models of how planetary systems form that could help astronomers determine what interstellar object populations should look like. Now, Hopkins is the lead author of a separate preprint study about 3I/ATLAS. It's difficult to determine the age of interstellar objects, but Hopkins and his colleagues believe 3I/ATLAS has about a 67% chance of being more than 7.6 billion years old — while our sun, solar system and its comets are only 4.5 billion years old, he said. It's pure chance that the interstellar comet crossed into our solar system — but it's not entirely rare, Hopkins said. We just don't see these visitors most of the time. '(Interstellar objects) actually pass through the Solar System all the time, especially the smaller ones which are more numerous: 80 the size of 'Oumuamua (about 656 feet, or 200 meters, across) pass through the orbit of Jupiter every year, they're just too small to detect unless they get very close to the Earth,' Hopkins wrote in an email. However, astronomers are eager to have the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which released its first images this summer, scanning the skies for interstellar the observatory's massive primary mirror spanning 28 feet (8.4 meters) across, it can spot small, faint and distant objects — and it's scanning the entire sky every three nights, allowing the telescope to better catch sight of rapidly moving interstellar objects. Hopkins' coauthors estimate that Rubin could spy anywhere between five and 50 interstellar objects over the next 10 years, and Hopkins is optimistically leaning toward the latter. Discovering more interstellar objects could help astronomers determine how varied or similar they are, especially since the first three have been so different from one another, Hopkins said. 'This latest interstellar tourist is one of a previously undetected population of objects bursting onto the scene that will gradually emerge,' Jewitt said. 'This is now possible because we have powerful sky survey capabilities that we didn't have before. We've crossed a threshold.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN
4 days ago
- Science
- CNN
Hubble offers sharp new view of interstellar comet
A new image has revealed the clearest glimpse yet of an interstellar visitor zipping through our solar system. The Hubble Telescope and its Wide Field Camera 3 got an incredible view of the comet named 3I/ATLAS, which came from beyond our solar system, on July 21 when the object was 277 million miles (445 million kilometers) from Earth. In the image, a teardrop-shaped dust cocoon can be seen streaking from the comet's icy nucleus. A comet's nucleus is its solid core, made of ice, dust and rocks. When comets travel near stars such as the sun, heat causes them to release gas and dust, which creates their signature tails. The venerable telescope is just one of many that are being used to track the comet, first discovered on July 1, as it zooms at a blistering 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) per hour. Its speed makes 3I/ATLAS the fastest object that originated outside of our solar system to ever be observed traveling through it. New observations, like those made with Hubble, are shedding more light on the comet's size. The small nucleus, which cannot be directly seen, could be as large as 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in diameter or as small as 1,000 feet (305 meters) across, according to a new paper accepted by The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Meanwhile, other space-based telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, along with ground-based observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, could reveal more about the object's chemical composition. The comet is expected to remain visible to ground-based telescopes through September before passing too close to the sun to be spotted until it reappears on the other side of our star in early December. But big questions about 3I/ATLAS remain, some of which may be impossible to answer — including where exactly it came from. 'No one knows where the comet came from. It's like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. You can't project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started on its path,' said lead study author David Jewitt, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a statement. While the comet appears to behave like those that originated in our solar system — as evidenced by that dust plume Hubble captured — the speed of 3I/ATLAS is one indicator that it's a visitor from another solar system in our galaxy. Scientists estimate it has been traveling through interstellar space for billions of years. As objects travel through space, they experience a gravitational slingshot effect from whizzing by stars and stellar nurseries that increases their momentum. So the longer 3I/ATLAS has spent in space, the faster it moves. The comet is only the third known interstellar object to have been observed in our solar system after 'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. '3I in particular is remarkable due to its velocity,' said Matthew Hopkins, a recent doctoral student in the department of physics at the University of Oxford who authored a separate study about the object. 'This velocity is very useful to us in particular as over the last few years me and my coauthors have been building a model that allows us to predict properties of (interstellar objects) such as their age and composition, just from their velocity.' For Hopkins, the discovery of 3I/ATLAS was incredibly fortuitous. The find occurred just five days after he finished his doctoral work, which involved a lot of time spent making predictions about future interstellar object discoveries. In a few months, he'll begin a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where he'll continue to research 3I/ATLAS. During his doctoral studies, Hopkins and his collaborators in New Zealand developed the Ōtautahi–Oxford model, a combination of data from the Milky Way's star population and models of how planetary systems form that could help astronomers determine what interstellar object populations should look like. Now, Hopkins is the lead author of a separate preprint study about 3I/ATLAS. It's difficult to determine the age of interstellar objects, but Hopkins and his colleagues believe 3I/ATLAS has about a 67% chance of being more than 7.6 billion years old — while our sun, solar system and its comets are only 4.5 billion years old, he said. It's pure chance that the interstellar comet crossed into our solar system — but it's not entirely rare, Hopkins said. We just don't see these visitors most of the time. '(Interstellar objects) actually pass through the Solar System all the time, especially the smaller ones which are more numerous: 80 the size of 'Oumuamua (about 656 feet, or 200 meters, across) pass through the orbit of Jupiter every year, they're just too small to detect unless they get very close to the Earth,' Hopkins wrote in an email. However, astronomers are eager to have the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which released its first images this summer, scanning the skies for interstellar the observatory's massive primary mirror spanning 28 feet (8.4 meters) across, it can spot small, faint and distant objects — and it's scanning the entire sky every three nights, allowing the telescope to better catch sight of rapidly moving interstellar objects. Hopkins' coauthors estimate that Rubin could spy anywhere between five and 50 interstellar objects over the next 10 years, and Hopkins is optimistically leaning toward the latter. Discovering more interstellar objects could help astronomers determine how varied or similar they are, especially since the first three have been so different from one another, Hopkins said. 'This latest interstellar tourist is one of a previously undetected population of objects bursting onto the scene that will gradually emerge,' Jewitt said. 'This is now possible because we have powerful sky survey capabilities that we didn't have before. We've crossed a threshold.' Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
Daily Mail
22-07-2025
- Science
- Daily Mail
Interstellar object hurtling through our solar system may bring life from distant world
Earth's famous Hubble Telescope has just revealed the first images of a mysterious interstellar object racing through our solar system. Spotted on Monday, Hubble has helped astronomers confirm that the massive, high-speed visitor is a comet from a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy. First spotted in late June, the comet named 3I/ATLAS has been on an 800-million-year journey to reach this solar system. The new images from Hubble captured what appears to be an icy tail that's ejecting rocky material from its 12-mile-long core. Those observations were reinforced by a new study published Tuesday morning which revealed 3I/ATLAS has water ice present in its coma, the luminous cloud of gas and dust surrounding a comet's nucleus. That revelation about 3I/ATLAS also confirmed that life-giving water exists far beyond our solar system, carried by comets throughout the cosmos, and potentially spreading the building blocks of life to other worlds. The giant comet has become the third interstellar object recorded by astronomers entering the solar system, joining Oumuamua in 2017 and the comet Borisov in 2019. It will make its closest pass to Earth on December 17 as it speeds through the solar system at 41 miles per second (roughly 150,000 miles per hour). The new study published on the pre-print server arXiv, also revealed that the comet's coma is made up of 30 percent water ice and 70 percent of a dust similar to a type of meteorite (Tagish Lake) that contains organic materials. While the study didn't detect organic molecules directly, the reddish dust in 3I/ATLAS resembles D-type asteroids, which are known to sometimes carry simple organic compounds like amino acids or hydrocarbons. These are the kinds of molecules that could, under the right conditions, contribute to the chemistry needed for life on a distant planet. Since 3I/ATLAS is an interstellar object - meaning it has traveled between star systems - it could theoretically visit other planetary systems. If it collided with a planet or released its material into a planet's atmosphere, it might deposit water and possibly organic molecules on those worlds. This process, called panspermia, is the idea that life's building blocks (or even simple life forms) could be transferred between worlds by objects like comets or asteroids. Here on Earth, a 2022 study published in Nature Communications found the five building blocks for DNA and RNA in several carbon-rich meteorites discovered around the world. Scientists have said this and similar discoveries support the theory that the origins of life on Earth were delivered by meteorites and other cosmic bodies like 3I/ATLAS billions of years ago. The comet is by far the biggest known interstellar visitor to pass through the solar system. At 12 miles long, it dwarfs Oumuamua, which was only about 300 to 1,300 feet long, and Borisov's core, which was about half a mile in diameter. Scientists don't believe 3I/ATLAS poses any threat to Earth. That's good news because the object would fall into the category of a 'planet killer' - likely causing an extinction-level event if it struck the Earth. On its current trajectory, it'll come within 2.4 astronomical units of the planet (223 million miles) in mid-December. An astronomical unit (AU) is equal to the distance between Earth and the sun, 93 million miles. Technically, the comet has already entered the solar system, and was less than four AU away from Earth after its discovery in early July. In October, the object from outside the solar system is expected to make its closest pass to a planet, coming within 0.4 AU (37 million miles) of Mars. To reach these findings, scientists took optical spectra (light measurements in the visible range) to see the colors in the comet's dust. Astronomers then used the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility to measure near-infrared light, which helped detect materials like water ice. The presence of water ice also hints that 3I/ATLAS formed in a cold, distant part of its original solar system, providing a clue about its origins and showing similarities to comets in our solar system. Harvard physicist Avi Loeb and student researcher Shokhruz Kakharov previously traced the path of the interstellar object to a thicker part of the Milky Way galaxy's disk, where older stars are found. They have estimated that 3I/ATLAS is older than our sun, which is 4.6 billion years old.
