Nasa has released new images of 3I/ATLAS, a stray comet from another world that people either think is an alien spacecraft or a big snowball.
Comet 3I/ATLAS, earlier known as A11pI3Z, is only the third object from beyond our solar system ever spotted from Earth.
Since it was first detected in July, this interstellar object has sparked countless theories about its origin, including whether it’s extraterrestrial.
Some conspiracy theorists have pointed to how Nasa hasn’t released any new images of the comet in three months as reason enough to doubt.
But this was because of a months-long US government shutdown which paralysed federal agencies like Nasa.
Speaking from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, at 3pm local time, Nasa officials said the pictures were captured by their fleet of instruments on the ground and up in space.
What is 3I/ATLAS?
For one, as a raft of astronomers have told Metro, it’s a comet.
Most comets we know are frozen chunks of leftover material from the birth of the solar system.
But 3I/ATLAS is made of ice and dirt from another star system – even if it came from our closest star, Proxima Centauri, it would have travelled nearly six million miles to get to us. It’s possibly been travelling the cosmos for billions of years, Nasa says.
The object was spotted in July by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, a Nasa-funded project that watches for space rocks that might be on a collision course with Earth.
Scientists estimate the cosmic snowball is about seven miles wide and is moving at about 130,000 miles per hour relative to the sun.
Have we seen pictures of 3I/ATLAS before?
Quite a few times now, including a recent photo dump where it was spotted doing some odd things, such as lacking a tail or glowing different colours.
These oddities are some of the reasons that Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb believes the comet would be otherworldly. Well, in the alien sense.
One quirk captured in recent shots included jets -eruptions of gas from under the comet’s surface as it warms up.
‘Is the network of jets associated with pockets of ice on the surface of a natural cometary nucleus, or are they coming from a set of jet thrusters used for navigation of a spacecraft?’ Dr Loeb previously told Metro.
‘We do not know. For now, let us enjoy the view. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.’
Dr Matthew Genge, of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London, said the jets are likely just that, jets.
‘Apart from it being an interstellar object, there is nothing particularly unusual about 3I/Atlas,’ he told Metro today.
‘It had more CO2 than most comets earlier in its passage, which probably suggests it formed at a large distance from its parent star.
‘Recent observations of jets have been suggested to be “thrusters”, however, many comets generate jets naturally through rapid degassing of deposits of particularly volatile ices on their surface.’
Where is the 3I/ATLAS right now?
Right now, the comet is about 190 million miles away, according to a tracker.
At its closest on December 19, the comet will still be very far away from Earth, at nearly twice the distance of the sun.
The final stop on its solar tour will be Jupiter, which it will do a drive-by visit of on March 16, 2016.
After this, it will shoot off into the abyss of space, possibly never to be seen again.
Can I see it in the sky?
If you have a tin foil hat on and doubt the validity of Nasa’s images, there is one other thing you can try: seeing for yourself.
Towards the end of November, the comet will be visible again in the early morning around 6am, just before the sun rises, with an amateur telescope.
If you pointed your telescope to the sky tonight, it would be roughly to the southeast of Venus. You can use tools like this one from the stargazing website The Sky to figure out where’s best to look.
As time goes on, its separation from the sun will get wider, so it will become visible earlier and earlier in the night.
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