The Hubble Space Telescope has provided the most clear image, so far, from Comet 3i/Atlas, the third visitor arrived from outside the Solar System and which was first sighted on July 1.
The comet was photographed by Hubble on July 21, when it was 365 million kilometers from the earth and the image has been made public this Thursday, according to NASA data.
The Hubble also caught a column of dust expelled from the side of the comet heated by the sun and the indication of a dust tail that moves away from the nucleus.
The data show that the interstellar visitor is losing dust in a similar way to the comets that are directed towards our star and that originate in the Solar System, but he has come from somewhere that is not the Milky Way.
The comet travels at an approximate speed of 210,000 kilometers per hour, the highest ever registered for a visitor to the solar system and is proof that it has been wandering for the interstellar space.
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Hubble observations have allowed astronomers to estimate the size of the comet’s solid ice cream, whose upper diameter limit is 5.6 kilometers, but it could be as small as 320 meters in diameter, he told European Space Agency (that) in a statement.
3I/Atlas can be the oldest comet observed, with more than 7,000 million years, which means 3,000 million prior to the Solar System, according to the astronomer of the University of Oxford, Matthew Hopkins, at the National Astronomy Meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society held last July.
Arrived from the direction of the Sagittarius constellation, the comet was sighted for the first time on July 1 by the telescope of the early detection and alert network of asteroids (Atlas) in Río Hurtado (Chile), when it was 675 million kilometers from the sun.
The kite should remain visible to terrestrial telescopes until September, after which it will happen too close to the sun to observe it, and it is expected that it will reappear on the other side of the star in early December.
3I/Atlas is the third interstellar traveler observed, the first was 1i/ʻoumuamua discovered in 2017 and the second 2i/Borisov in 2019.
With EFE information.
