NASA’s Webb Detects Methane on Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS - NASA Science

NASA’s Webb Detects Methane on Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS

The top image shows interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as seen with MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, along with contours that illustrate where different gases were located at the time the comet was viewed. Water vapor spreads far beyond the nucleus because much of it is released from icy grains in the coma, while carbon dioxide and methane are most concentrated near the comet’s nucleus. The bottom image shows the spectrum, with the labels indicating the features from the various gases that Webb found escaping from the comet.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has collected its first mid-infrared chemical fingerprint of an interstellar object during a recent revisit to comet 3I/ATLAS.