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An image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showing the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. The comet is a small white dot in the center of the image, with a light blue halo of light that takes up most of the image. Other stars are shown streaking across the image as diagonal blue-white lines.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Revisits 3I/ATLAS

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reobserved interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Nov. 30, with its Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. At the time, the comet was about 178 million miles (286 million kilometers) from Earth. Hubble tracked the comet as it moved across the sky. 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.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
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Image CreditNASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory). Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI)
Size3437x2598px