HUBBLE ATLAS
Comet 3I/ATLAS — image from the Hubble Space Telescope

Solar System

Comet 3I/ATLAS

August 7, 2025 · NASA

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This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Hubble photographed the comet on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Because Hubble was tracking the comet moving along a hyperbolic trajectory, the stationary background stars are streaked in the exposure.

About the colours

These images were acquired by the WFC3 Instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. The color results from assigning a hue (color) to a monochromatic (grayscale) image. In this case, the assigned color is: Blue: F350LP

About the data

The Hubble observations include those from program 17830 (D. Jewitt)

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