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On January 22, 2026, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS almost completely lined up with the Sun-Earth axis, exposing unmatched jet structures and a prolonged anti-tail.
This picture of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was caught by Hubble’s WFC3 instrument on January 22, 2026, at 13:10 UTC. Image credit: NASA/ ESA/ Hubble/ Man-To Hui, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory.
“Interstellar items supply special chances for studying products from other excellent systems,” Harvard University’s Professor Abraham Loeb and Dr. Mauro Barbieri of the INAF-Padova Observatory composed in a current paper in the Research study Notes of the American Astronomical Society
“Unfortunately for that function, 1I/Oumuamua did not show traces of gas or dust around it and 2I/Borisov was just observed at stage angles relative to the Sun-Earth axis of over 16 degrees and never ever near opposition.”
On January 22, 2026, the interstellar things 3I/ATLAS lined up to within an incredibly little angle of 0.69 degrees with the Earth-Sun axis.
Throughout that minute, our world passed nearly straight in between the Sun and the comet.
“This uncommon positioning led to a brightness rise whose magnitude and development rate are determined by the structure and structure of the particles shed by jets of 3I/ATLAS,” Professor Loeb discussed in a declaration.
This picture of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was recorded by Hubble’s WFC3 instrument on January 22, 2026, at 13:40 UTC. Image credit: NASA/ ESA/ Hubble/ Man-To Hui, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory.
Shanghai Astronomical Observatory astronomer Man-To Hui utilized Hubble to observe 3I/ATLAS under the ‘conditions that might not duplicate for years.’
The images of the interstellar things were gotten with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument.
“When the Hubble images from the January 22, 2026 positioning were processed by my partner Toni Scarmato, the residuals revealed the system of 4 jets, consisting of a popular anti-tail directed almost towards the Sun and Earth, supplemented by 3 mini-jets,” Professor Loeb composed.
“The mini-jets are similarly separated from each other by an angle of 120 degrees, and among them is faint, potentially due to the fact that it is concealed in an undesirable orientation relative to Earth.”
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