The Hubble team has released a stunning new image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, which is only the third object of its kind ever observed.
This image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was taken by Hubble on November 30, 2025. At the time, the comet was about 286 million km (178 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / D. Jewitt, UCLA / M.-T. Hui, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory / J. DePasquale, STScI.
3I/ATLAS was discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on July 1, 2025.
At the time, the interstellar comet was at a heliocentric distance of 4.51 astronomical units (AU), with an eccentricity of 6.13.
Also known as C/2025 N1 (ATLAS) and A11pl3Z, the object arrived from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, and is moving with a very high radial velocity of around 58 km (36 miles) per second.
3I/ATLAS made a close approach to Mars at a distance of 0.194 AU on October 3 and reached its closest approach to the Sun — known as perihelion — on October 30.
The interstellar visitor will be approaching Jupiter at a distance of 0.357 AU on March 16, 2026.
On November 30, the astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument to observe 3I/ATLAS.
“Hubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky,” they said in a statement.
“As a result, background stars appear as streaks of light.”
“Hubble previously observed 3I/ATLAS in July, shortly after its discovery, and a number of NASA missions have since studied the comet as well.”
“Observations are expected to continue for several more months as 3I/ATLAS heads out of the Solar System.
“The image shows a teardrop-shaped glowing halo that extends towards the Sun,” said Harvard University’s Professor Avi Loeb about the new Hubble image.
“This sunward anti-tail extension was also apparent in the pre-perihelion Hubble image, taken on July 21, as 3I/ATLAS was approaching the Sun from a distance that is 56% larger from Earth.”
“The new radius of the glow is about 40,000 km (24,855 miles) and its anti-tail extension goes out to about 60,000 km (37,282 miles).”
“In a recent paper, I suggested that the teardrop of the coma in post-perihelion images of 3I/ATLAS is associated with a large number of macroscopic non-volatile objects that separated from it as a result of its measured non-gravitational acceleration away from the Sun,” he said.
“I predicted that by November 30th, the swarm of objects would be closer to the Sun than 3I/ATLAS by about 60,000 km if the objects overlapped with 3I/ATLAS at perihelion.”
“This separation is in perfect agreement with the anti-tail extension of the teardrop shape in the new Hubble image.”
