3I/ATLAS

Rare card · No. 44636

3I/ATLAS, also known as C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and previously as A11pl3Z, is an interstellar comet discovered on 1 July 2025 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) station. The comet follows an unbound, hyperbolic trajectory past the Sun, and passed by Earth at 1.8 AU, posing no threat. The prefix "3I" designates it as the third confirmed interstellar object passing through the Solar System, after 1I/ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov. 3I/ATLAS is an active comet consisting of a solid icy nucleus and a coma, which is a cloud of gas and icy dust escaping from the nucleus. The Sun is responsible for the comet's activity because it heats up the comet's nucleus to sublimate its ice into gas, which outgasses and lifts up dust from the comet's surface to form its coma. Images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and various interplanetary spacecraft suggest that the diameter of 3I/ATLAS's nucleus is less than 1 km (0.62 mi). Observations by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have shown...

Read on Wikipedia · Image International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/B. Bolin Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF N…, CC BY 4.0