For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust drifted between the stars—like a sealed bottle cast into the cosmic ocean. This summer, that bottle finally washed ashore in our solar system and was designated 3I/ATLAS, ...
Interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS has been constantly changing as it makes its way through our solar system. That's to be expected, as, for the first time in potentially billions of years, it's getting close to the energy put ...
A comet from another star system will swing by Mars on Friday as a fleet of spacecraft trains its sights on the interstellar visitor.
Astronomy is increasingly becoming an online affair. Recent discoveries of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS and R2 SWAN have highlighted this fact, when both were first discussed on message boards and verified via remote telescopes ...
In our nearby stellar neighborhood, a burned-out star is snacking on a fragment of a Pluto-like object. With its unique ultraviolet capability, only NASA's Hubble Space Telescope could identify that this meal is taking place.
The period known as "cosmic noon," which took place roughly 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang, was characterized by the rapid formation of new stars and planetary systems. Naturally, objects dated to this period are ...
Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third ISO ever detected. It was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) station on 1 July 2025. It's traveling through the inner solar system at about 220,000 km/h and ...
The earliest images of 3I/ATLAS, newly uncovered by Michigan State University, reveal how the interstellar object evolved as it traveled through our solar system—and how other distant solar systems might be different from ...
Interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS that have been captured in planet-forming disks around young stars could become the seeds of giant planets, bypassing a hurdle that theoretical models have previously been unable to explain.
The eyes of every astronomer widened this year when an interstellar traveler was discovered in our solar system.
