A comet the size of Manhattan has been spotted coming into our solar system by NASA, marking only the third time this has happened.
The comet, named 3I/ATLAS, was first discovered on Tuesday by NASA’s ATLAS telescope in Chile, setting off a flurry of excitement among astronomers racing to gather every bit of data possible as they traced its journey back to June 14, NASA announced Wednesday.
“These things take millions of years to go from one stellar neighborhood to another, so this thing has likely been traveling through space for hundreds of millions of years, even billions of years,” Paul Chodas, director of NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies, said Thursday.
“We don’t know, and so we can’t predict which star it came from.”
The icy celestial wanderer, believed to have arrived from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, is expected to pass 150 million miles away from Earth in October and poses no threat, NASA confirmed.
Currently, it is about 416 million miles from the sun, near Jupiter, and is hurtling through space at 37 miles per second.
Early observations reveal a glowing tail and a surrounding cloud of gas and dust enveloping its nucleus, adding to its cosmic mystique.
Its exact origin remains a mystery.
“We’ve been expecting to see interstellar objects for decades, frankly, and finally we’re seeing them,” Chodas added, highlighting that its size, around 12 miles across, makes it larger than the first two known interstellar objects ever discovered.
“A visitor from another solar system, even though it’s natural — it’s not artificial, don’t get excited because some people do… It’s just very exciting.”
The first interstellar object identified from Earth was Oumuamua, discovered in 2017 by a Hawaiian observatory. The second, 21/Borisov, was detected in 2019.
Now, 3I/ATLAS joins this exclusive cosmic club as it continues its journey through our solar system, where it will remain visible by telescope through September before nearing the sun.
Astronomers expect the comet to reappear on the other side of the sun in early December, giving scientists another window to observe this rare interstellar traveler before it disappears back into the vast darkness of space.
But don't worry, it's coming nowhere near Earth, so it poses no danger to us!