NASA releases new images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS

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NASA releases new images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS  NASA released close-up images of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas, only the third known visitor from another star, after it passed near Mars. The closest the comet will come to Earth is 269 million kilometres in mid-December. Then it will hightail it back into interstellar space, never to return.  READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/11/20/nasa-releases-new-images-of-interstellar-comet-3iatlas  Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages

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00:00A NASA-funded telescope, the Atlas Survey Telescope in Chile, first reported observations

00:09of the comet on July 1, 2025 to the Minor Planet Center.

00:13This object is a comet.

00:15It looks and behaves like a comet, and all evidence points to it being a comet.

00:20But this one came from outside the solar system, which makes it fascinating, exciting, and

00:24scientifically very important.

00:26This is only the third interstellar object like this that humanity has ever found.

00:40The shape of the nucleus is also difficult to pin down because generally we're not resolving

00:45it in our observations.

00:47It's obscured by the dust, and especially it's obscured by the reflected sunlight off of the

00:53dust in the inner part of the coma.

00:55But what observers from the ground have been able to do is observe the brightness of the

01:01center of the comet over time to see if there's a modulation of that brightness that would

01:06be an indication of rotation.

01:09And it's very difficult to discern.

01:11So what it's looking like so far is that there's not a big, the shape of the nucleus is not

01:19very far from being round.

01:20It doesn't seem to be a big, or at least we're not seeing signatures of a very elongated object

01:25yet.

01:39It's only about a large part of the time, but it's very, very little bit.

01:44Thank you, sir.

01:46You're welcome.

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