This is a Hubble Space telescope image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Hubble photographed the comet on 21 July 21 2025, when the comet was 365 million kilometres from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Because Hubble was tracking the comet moving along a hyperbolic trajectory, the stationary background stars are streaked in the exposure. [Image description: At the center of the image is a comet that appears as a teardrop-shaped bluish cocoon of dust coming off the comet’s solid, icy nucleus and seen against a black background. The comet appears to be heading to the bottom left corner of the image. About a dozen short, light blue diagonal streaks are seen scattered across the image, which are from background stars that appeared to move during the exposure because the telescope was tracking the moving comet.]
About
On
January 22, 2026, at 7:00 PM, ET, Hamptons Observatory and co-host
Suffolk County Community College will present a free, virtual lecture
by Dr. Ariel Graykowski, a research scientist from the SETI
Institute, who will talk about comets, interstellar visitors such as
3I/ATLAS and its unique features, as well as how professionals and
citizen scientists are collaborating to explore the dynamic sky in an
effort to learn more about our universe. Details and registration
information may be found on
https://HamptonsObservatory.org
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