Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS captured as it passes rapidly through the Solar System by Jupiter-bound spacecraft
This mysterious interstellar visitor is on a whirlwind journey through our solar system
A camera on the European Space Agency (ESA)’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JuICE) captured Comet 3i/ATLAS last November.
A mysterious comet passed between the orbits of Earth and Mars in late 2025 and reached speeds of more than 150,000 miles per hour during its closest approach to the Sun. Our solar system’s rare interstellar guest attracted the attention of astronomers, and many trained their observations on it to understand what it really is, why it is here and where it is going.
Each new piece of data offers a glimpse of space beyond our solar system. And as the comet, called 3I/ATLAS, passes through our cosmic neighborhood, space agencies have assigned spacecraft to observe it as it passes. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter-bound spacecraft is no exception: a new image The comet captured last November by the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or JUS, shows that it is roughly egg-shaped, with a cloud of gas clouding its central core, or nucleus.
Comet 3i/Atlas, as seen from ESA’s Juice.
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“Although 3I/ATLAS is a visitor from interstellar space traveling from outside the Solar System, its behavior is entirely consistent with that expected from a ‘normal’ comet,” the agency said in a statement. statement.
“Nobody knows where the comet came from,” said David Jewitt, director of the Institute for Planets and Exoplanets at the University of California, Los Angeles. statement Last year. “You can’t project it with any accuracy to find out where it started on its path.”
Trajectory of comet 3I/ATLAS as it passes through the Solar System.
Comet 3I/ATLAS has puzzled and excited scientists since it was first spotted in July 2025. At the time, its extraordinary speed – 137,000 miles per hour – and strange trajectory indicated that it might have been traveling through interstellar space for billions of years. according to nasa. Now! three interstellar objects has ever been discovered passing through our solar system. And despite the efforts to see it, Comet 3I/ATLAS remains largely a mystery.
“It’s like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second,” Jewitt said in the same statement.
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