Dr Laura Driessen

Comet 3I/ATLAS

Would you like to know more about Comet 3I/ATLAS?

You’re in the right place! I’ve put together this page of resources. It’s sort of an FAQ, sort of a place to help you get started researching and understanding more about the comet. It’s tough to find good info or to find the actual astronomy papers, so I hope I have what you’re looking for here!

If you’ve come from my TikTok, welcome!

If you did come from TikTok and you’re feeling some type of way, note: I made a silly 8 second video about a comet. I am not obligated to make any more content or reply to you simply because you demand it. Part of science is doing your own research, from multiple sources. But it’s also important to remember: just because we’ve observed something and don’t have an explanation yet, does not mean it’s aliens. It just means we can’t explain it yet.

I like to call this idea that “if we can’t explain it, it must be aliens”, the “Aliens of the Gaps” theory. This is because it’s similar to the “God of the Gaps” theory.

If it isn’t a spaceship, then what is it?

It’s a comet. It’s called “Comet 3I/ATLAS” because it’s a comet.

But Avi Loeb says…

Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, Jason Wright, put together this write-up of the “anomalies” Avi Loeb points to and explains them:

Loeb’s 3I/ATLAS “Anomalies” Explained

If it is a comet, then prove it

This is a list of astronomy papers about the comet. You’ll notice that all of the astronomers simply call it a comet. The page where the links are is called ADS. It’s a library/search engine for astronomy papers, both peer-reviewed a pre-print. Most papers are either open access or have a copy on ArXiv, which is open access.

Other info about it:

This is the link to the recent detection of OH using the MeerKAT telecsope:
https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=17473

Why is it so mysterious? Why is there so little information about it?

Here’s a link to more than 30 papers and Astronomer’s Telegrams (ATels) about it.

There are a bunch of observations and data on it. This article puts together a whole lot of info, and a lot of the data will be publicly available. So you can look up the data and download it yourself. It’s been observed with Hubble, JWST, and other space missions as well as ground-based telescopes and future plans for more observations.

ESA Comet 3I/ATLAS FAQ page

NASA Comet 3I/ATLAS factsheet

Timeanddate.com info page

Where is comet 3I/ATLAS right now?

This website provides real-time updates on the location of the comet.

Why does it look so fuzzy?

There are a few reasons for this. It’s moving and it’s faint. Comets and asteroids don’t emit their own light, the reflect (or absorb and re-emit) light from the Sun. This makes them very faint and hard to detect.

The main reason is because comets are fuzzy. As they get closer to the Sun they heat up, and as they heat up the ice (not just water ice, can be lots of different types of ice) sublimates into gas. That gas creates a fuzzy cloud around the comet, or coma. So it looks fuzzy in the Hubble images and other images simply because it is “fuzzy”.

What about the Nickel?

Astronomers have detected Nickel in the spectrum of Comet 3I/ATLAS. You can read the article the astronomers studying this have written here, and find some astronomy papers here, here and here.

What about the anti-tail?

Yep, that’s been seen before on other comets. It’s cool and not super common, but it’s not unique or alarming. Anti-tails have actually been observed way back to 1974. Read more:

What about the nickel and cyanide?

This is cool and interesting!

Isn’t it unusual that it passed so close to some Solar System planets?

For context the distance between the Earth and the Sun is approximately 150 million km and the distance between the Earth and the Moon is approximately 240 thousand km. Closest approach to various planets:

That’s from Wikipedia. I wouldn’t say any of those distances are particularly close.

What about it’s trajectory?

Info about it’s trajectory:

Didn’t it come from the same place as the WOW! signal?

Avi Loeb claims that the comet came from “near” the position of the WOW! signal. We can divide the sky up into degrees. A full circle around the whole sky is 360 degrees. From horizon to horizon is 180 degrees. The Moon is approximately half a degree across. Avi Loeb claims that the comet came from with 9 degrees of the location of the WOW! signal. So that’s 18 Moons away! No matter which way you look at it, that’s not near at all.

What about characteristic [insert here] or chemical signature [insert here]?

Check out this list of papers and ATels about the comet. And remember, when you hear about some feature/characteristic/observation of something first:

  • Verify that it has actually been detected/observed from at least one other source, preferably more
  • Find the paper that presents that observation/detection
  • Read what that paper says about it. The discussion section is usually a good spot to look
  • Check multiple sources (and by source, I mean different papers, not different internet astronomers, myself included). The comet is still a relatively recent discovery, so this might not be possible just yet, but there will be more analysis in the future
  • Remember: just because we can’t explain something yet, does not mean it’s aliens. It just means we can’t explain it yet

Why haven’t NASA or ESA commented on it?

@astrolaurad

Replying to @sami1853 Be honest, if NASA or ESA released a statement saying “Comet 3I/ATLAS is not aliens” would you think “cool, I believe them” or would you think “that’s exactly what they would say to cover up that it *is* actually aliens”? It makes sense that they wouldn’t talk about aliens, instead talking about the comet itself and the cool observations and science. Even mentioning the word “aliens” completely distracts from pretty much anything else You can check out my real-life astronomer credentials and papers on my website, astrolaura.com

♬ original sound – Dr Laura Driessen

Where’s your original TikTok on it?

@astrolaurad

An alien spaceship in the Solar System? 🫣👽 Or… maybe not Comet 3I/ATLAS is a comet that’s currently zipping through our Solar System. It’s going to reach it’s closest point to the Sun on the 30th of October, and at that point the Sun will block it from Earth’s view. After that, it’ll head out of our Solar System The “I” in “3I” (it’s an “i”, not the number 1, not the best letter to use!) stands for “interstellar”. It’s the third object we’ve detected that’s come from outside our Solar System. It’s probably spent millions of years whizzing through space, just to spend a short time passing through our Solar System So what is it? Here’s a quote from Tom Statler, NASA’s lead scientist for Solar System small bodies, when he spoke to IFLScience: “It looks like a comet. It does comet things. It very, very strongly resembles, in just about every way, the comets that we know.” Scientists don’t like to say things like “I’m 100% certain it’s a comet” because we’re always open to new evidence. But that’s as close as an astronomer will get to saying “it’s a comet” Want to read some scientific articles about the comet? Astronomers have a cool library where you can find papers called ADS (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu). If you go there and type object:”Comet 3I/ATLAS” into the search bar, you’ll get over 45 results about the comet. And most of them are publicly available (not behind a paywall) on the ArXiv website Want to look up the other two interstellar visitors? They’re called 1I/’Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. And with the Vera Rubin Observatory about to start its big survey, soon we’ll be finding a bunch more interstellar visitors!

♬ original sound – Dr Laura Driessen

Why do you pronounce “astronomer” so strangely?

@astrolaurad

Not ocker enough to say “oh no cleo” properly, but too Australian to say “astronomer” like a US American 💀 Not that I want to, I love my Aussie accent 😎 I’m an Australian astronomer. I’m from Melbourne (Mel-bin) originally, but I’ve lived in Perth for a bit, I live in Sydney now, and I’m in Brisbane (Bris-vegas) atm I did do my master’s in at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands and my PhD at the University of Manchester in the UK, but apparently never lost my Aussie accent (Ostriches are from Africa, Emus (Eem-you) are from Australia)

♬ original sound – Dr Laura Driessen