Newly spotted comet is 3rd interstellar object seen in our solar system

Newly spotted comet is 3rd interstellar object seen in our solar system

Astronomers are tracking a newly spotted comet hailing from parts unknown, only the third time such an interstellar object has been observed visiting our solar system.

According to U.S. space agency NASA, the interloper – named "3I/ATLAS" – was first spotted on Tuesday by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, telescope located in Rio Hurtado, Chile. Astronomers said its unusual trajectory indicated it had ventured from beyond our solar system.

Journeying at a speed of around 60 kilometers per second from the direction of the center of the Milky Way galaxy, 3I/ATLAS is presently located about 670 million kilometers from Earth.

"Beyond that we do not know very much, and there are many efforts underway to observe this object with larger telescopes to determine composition," University of Hawaii astronomer Larry Denneau, co-principal investigator for ATLAS, said on Thursday.

The only other such interstellar visitors previously observed by astronomers were objects called 1I/'Oumuamua, detected in 2017, and 2I/Borisov, discovered in 2019.

"The comet has some similarities to 2I/Borisov in that it appears to be an icy comet, but it is much larger, possibly 10 km in diameter," Denneau said.

"It currently has a faint coma," Denneau added, referring to the cloud of gas and dust surrounding a comet's nucleus, "but the coma and tail may increase dramatically as the object comes closer to the sun. Its closest approach to the sun will be later this year, when it will come inside the orbit of Mars. We don't know what will happen, so that's exciting."

Astronomers said the comet poses no threat to Earth and will never come closer than 240 million km away.