The Hubble team has released a stunning new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which is only the third object of its type ever observed.
This image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was taken by the Hubble Telescope on November 30, 2025. At the time, the comet was about 286 million km (178 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: NASA/ESA/STScI/D. Jewitt, UCLA/M.-T. Hui, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory / J. DePasquale, STScI.
3I/ATLAS Discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) research telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile on July 1, 2025.
At that time, the interstellar comet was at a heliocentric distance of 4.51 astronomical units (AU) with an eccentricity of 6.13.
The object, also known as C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and A11pl3Z, arrived from the constellation Sagittarius and is moving at a very high radial speed of about 58 km (36 miles) per second.
3I/ATLAS approached Mars at a distance of 0.194 AU. on October 3 and reached its closest approach to the Sun, known as perihelion, on October 30.
The interstellar guest will approach Jupiter at a distance of 0.357 AU. March 16, 2026.
On November 30, astronomers used Hubble Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument for observing 3I/ATLAS.
“Hubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky,” they said in a statement.
“As a result, the stars in the background appear as streaks of light.”
“Hubble previously observed 3I/ATLAS in July, shortly after its discovery, and a number of NASA missions have studied the comet since then.”
“Observations are expected to continue for several months as 3I/ATLAS exits the Solar System.
“The image shows a teardrop-shaped glowing halo extending toward the Sun.” said Harvard University professor Avi Loeb on the new Hubble image.
“This expansion of the antitail toward the Sun was also visible in the pre-perihelion Hubble image taken on July 21, when 3I/ATLAS approached the Sun from a distance 56% greater than Earth.”
“The new glow radius is about 40,000 km (24,855 miles) and its counter-tail extent is about 60,000 km (37,282 miles).”
“IN recent article“I hypothesized that the coma blob in the 3I/ATLAS post-perihelion images is due to a large number of macroscopic non-volatile objects being separated from it as a result of its measured non-gravitational acceleration away from the Sun,” he said.
“I predicted that by November 30 the swarm of objects would be closer to the Sun than 3I/ATLAS by about 60,000 km if the objects overlapped with 3I/ATLAS at perihelion.”
“This separation is perfectly consistent with the continuation of the teardrop shape against the tail in the new Hubble image.”
