- ISRO released a new image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS using its Mount Abu telescope
- 3I/ATLAS behaves like a typical comet despite originating from outside the Solar System
- James Webb Telescope found 3I/ATLAS's coma rich in carbon dioxide, not water
India's space agency ISRO has released a striking new image of 3I/ATLAS, captured through its 1.2-metre Mount Abu telescope. The picture, taken during a brief observation window in mid-November, shows the comet's bright nucleus surrounded by a faint, bluish-green coma - a cloud of gas and dust that expands as the object warms on its approach to the inner Solar System. According to ISRO website, spectroscopic measurements from the same run detected the signature of molecules of some gases that are classic markers of typical cometary activity. The production rate of these gases - a measure of how much material the comet is shedding - suggests that despite its exotic origin, 3I/ATLAS is behaving much like many of the comets from our own solar system.
The first image of 3I/ATLAS captured on July 1, 2025.
Photo Credit: Photo Credit: ATLAS/University of Hawaii/NASA
Comets are often described as "dirty snowballs" - ancient, frozen bodies made of ice, rock and organic material. But 3I/ATLAS is different. It is only the third confirmed interstellar object ever detected after Oumuamua (2017) and Comet Borisov (2019), piquing the interest of the scientific community. Unlike regular comets that originate from our Solar System's distant Oort Cloud, interstellar objects travel from far beyond, shaped by conditions in entirely different star systems.
3I/ATLAS appears as a bright object in NASA PUNCH image from September-October.
Photo Credit: Photo credit: science.nasa.gov
Meanwhile, NASA on Wednesday released new images of the interstellar object, taken from multiple vantage points across the solar system. On October 2, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera snapped a close-up of the comet when it was just 18.6 million miles (29.9 million km) away. Several days later, NASA's MAVEN spacecraft recorded ultraviolet images revealing a halo of hydrogen gas around the comet - a telltale sign that sunlight is breaking water molecules apart.
In another dramatic capture, the Lucy spacecraft, while en route to Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, photographed 3I/ATLAS from a distance of about 240 million miles. Those images, stacked over time, show a faint, fuzzy core surrounded by a diffuse coma behind subtle tail.
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS captured by NASA's Lucy spacecraft in September.
Photo Credit: Photo credit: science.nasa.gov
What emerges from all these observations is a portrait of a visitor that looks and behaves very much like a comet - albeit one from beyond the solar system. As NASA put it, "all evidence points to it being a comet", not an alien artefact.
Yet, 3I/ATLAS remains an object of deep scientific fascination. Infrared spectroscopy from the James Webb Space Telescope suggests its coma is dominated by carbon dioxide rather than water - its CO2-to-H2O ratio is unusually high, hinting that the comet may have formed in a very different environment to comets in our solar system.
James Webb telescope captured 3I/ATLAS with its near-infrared spectograph in August
Photo Credit: Photo credit: science.nasa.gov
For enthusiasts, spotting the comet will not be easy. It remains faint, visible only through large telescopes under clear skies, and is already moving rapidly past the Solar System. But researchers emphasise that the significance of 3I/ATLAS lies not in its visual spectacle, but in the scientific clues it carries from distant stellar nurseries.
As space agencies track the comet's path, 3I/ATLAS is offering astronomers rare clues about what lies beyond our Solar System. It will soon disappear into the darkness it came from, but the images and measurements gathered now will help researchers piece together how such interstellar travellers form - and what they can reveal about the wider universe we live in.
