A spacecraft en route to Jupiter has captured a visitor from outside our solar system.
This striking image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was imaged by the JANUS science camera aboard the European Space Agencyits Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft; it reveals the object’s glowing coma and sweeping tail of gas and dust.
What is it?
Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third known interstellar object ever discovered to pass through ours the solar system. Unlike most comets, which originate in Kuiper belt or that Oort Cloud, this icy wanderer formed around another star before drifting into our cosmic neighborhood.
The bright, egg-shaped glow in the center of the image is the comet’s coma – a huge cloud of gas and dust released as sunlight heats the comet’s icy core. Extending away from the coma is a long tail sculpted by radiation from the sun and the prevailing solar wind.
The arrows at the top left show the direction the comet is moving (blue) and the direction of the Sun (yellow).
Why is it special?
JANUS caught this view November 6, 2025, just seven days after 3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to the Sun. At the time, JUICE was about 41 million miles (66 million kilometers) away from the comet.
Throughout November, five of JUICE’s instruments – JANUS, MAJIS, SWI, PEP and UVS – observed the cosmic wanderer, collecting images and spectrometry data to determine its composition and activity.
But because JUICE was on the opposite side of the sun from Earth during these observations, data had to be transmitted at a slower rate, delaying the researchers’ first glimpse of the results. The instrument teams had to wait until just last week to receive the data and are now hard at work analyzing it all. They will meet at the end of March to discuss their findings.
