NASA has multiple resources watching
3I/ATLAS
en.wikipedia.org
is an interstellar comet[18][19] 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,[5][d] and passed by Earth at 1.8 AU, posing no threat.
The interstellar visitor may still have a few things to tell us before it leaves our solar system.
www.space.com
NASA exoplanet probe tracks interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS to gauge its spin
The interstellar visitor may still have a few things to tell us before it leaves our solar system.
NASA's planet-hunting TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) spacecraft recently caught a glimpse of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. (Image credit: TESS insert by NASA/comet background by Enrico Bellodi from Pexels/assembled by Kenna Hughes-Castleberry via Canva pro)
NASA's planet-hunting
TESS spacecraft recently caught a view of a very different kind of cosmic object: interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS.
During a
special observation run from Jan. 15 to Jan. 22, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (
TESS) repeatedly observed
comet 3I/ATLAS as it headed out of our
solar system. With its wide field of view, TESS recorded the comet as a bright, fast-moving dot dragging a faint tail across a crowded starfield.
Using data from some of earlier January observations, Daniel Muthukrishna of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) compiled the images into a 28-hour video that shows comet 3I/ATLAS's trajectory. Unfortunately, TESS' observations were interrupted when the spacecraft entered
"safe mode" after experiencing an issue with its solar panels, so the video includes a time jump from Jan. 15 to Jan. 18.
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS (circled) is a bright dot with a tail passing through a field of stars in this video from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite). The sequence uses 28 hours of TESS full frame images collected over Jan. 15 and Jan. 18 to 19. The time jump from Jan. 15 to Jan. 18 occurs 11 seconds into the video. (Image credit: NASA/Daniel Muthukrishna, MIT)
Scientists like Muthukrishna hope to use the dataset to study the comet's activity and rotation, clues that reveal how vigorously it's shedding dust and gas and how quickly the comet's core spins.
TESS measurements put comet 3I/ATLAS's brightness at about 11.5 in
apparent magnitude, roughly 100 times fainter than what we can see with the naked eye, but accessible using
telescopes.
NASA's
TESS mission was designed to find
exoplanets via the
transit method, in which a faraway star dims slightly when a planet in its system passes in front of it. But TESS' wide field of view and consistent monitoring also make it useful for detecting and tracking closer objects, including comets and
asteroids, for longer stretches of time.
This capability helped astronomers spot comet 3I/ATLAS before they even knew it was there. TESS happened to observe a
comet in May 2025, two months before
3I/ATLAS was discovered. By looking back through all the data and compiling multiple observations, astronomers could filter out the interstellar visitor through the noise and track its movements. While unfortunately this doesn't tell us where the comet originated, it does give us other key details.
On January 22, 2026, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS nearly perfectly aligned with the Sun-Earth axis, revealing unprecedented jet structures and an extended anti-tail.
www.sci.news
Rare Cosmic Lineup Gives Hubble Close Look at 3I/ATLAS
On January 22, 2026, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS nearly perfectly aligned with the Sun-Earth axis, revealing unprecedented jet structures and an extended anti-tail.
This image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was captured by Hubble’s WFC3 instrument on January 22, 2026, at 13:10 UTC.
“Interstellar objects provide unique opportunities for studying materials from other stellar systems,” Harvard University’s Professor Abraham Loeb and Dr. Mauro Barbieri of the INAF-Padova Observatory wrote in a
recent paper in the
Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.
“Unfortunately for that purpose, 1I/Oumuamua did not display traces of gas or dust around it and 2I/Borisov was only observed at phase angles relative to the Sun-Earth axis of over 16 degrees and never near opposition.”
On January 22, 2026, the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS aligned to within an exceptionally small angle of 0.69 degrees with the Earth-Sun axis.
During that moment, our planet passed almost directly between the Sun and the comet.
“This rare alignment resulted in a brightness surge whose magnitude and growth rate are dictated by the composition and structure of the particles shed by jets of 3I/ATLAS,” Professor Loeb explained in a
statement.
This image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was captured by Hubble’s WFC3 instrument on January 22, 2026, at 13:40 UTC.
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory astronomer Man-To Hui used Hubble to observe 3I/ATLAS under the ‘conditions that may not repeat for decades.’
The
images of the interstellar object were obtained with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument.
“When the Hubble images from the January 22, 2026 alignment were processed by my collaborator Toni Scarmato, the residuals showed the system of 4 jets, including a prominent anti-tail directed nearly towards the Sun and Earth, supplemented by three mini-jets,” Professor Loeb wrote.
“The mini-jets are equally separated from each other by an angle of 120 degrees, and one of them is faint, possibly because it is hidden in an unfavorable orientation relative to Earth.”