Comet to Pass the Sun on Extraordinary Lonely Cosmic Journey

It’s our welcome to Spring in Australia and what would it know of our planet, our tides and seasons?

3i/ATLAS approaches Earth–Mars orbits – Third observable known interstellar body/comet to visit our solar system (first detected on 1 July 2025 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System station at Río Hurtado, Chile) comes closest to Earth in December 2025 at a distance of around 240-270 million km, 625 times the distance between Earth and Moon (384,000 kms). However it may be more readily visible from Earth (with optical assistance) in early October when it passes closest to Mars at around 30 million km or end of October when it is closest to the Sun at around 210 million km with its highlighted elongated tail at perihelion. It approaches at a variable velocity of around 58 km/s (210,000-220,000 km/h) gathering speed on approach, side-on to our solar disc, relative to our Sun – both sun and comet on clockwise trajectories through our galaxy.

It has a nucleus of ice-water, rock hard in interstellar space, and coma comprising of carbon dioxide, and other elements, its tail will lengthen as it rounds the sun – vaping gas particles. Then it’s gone forever back into galactic interstellar space on its extraordinary lonely cosmic journey – till a star in a billion years or more captures it, if ever our visitor flies by close enough.

Despite 200-400 billion stars in our own galaxy that might be remote, due to the depth and expanse of interstellar space in between and the velocity it is traveling at, relative to any given star/solar system like us (on Orion’s Arm) – swirling around like an octopus on arms and spurs of our Milky Way.

3i/ATLAS approaches us from the constellation of Sagittarius, a cluster of stars as seen from Earth in the direction of the galactic centre of the Milky Way, hence it ultimately comes from a denser region of stars, perhaps even our current galactic hub estimated at 7 billion years old, and far more ancient than us (4.6 billion years).

The Milky Way is far older, the original stars at the centre formed around 13.61 billion years ago, just 139 million years after the current birth of our known universe. Those first stars have long since burnt out in ancient times, now white dwarf or powerful neutron stars and black hole remnants, feeding at the current galactic table of delights. We are lucky enough to be on Orion’s Arm in outer less dangerous regions away from the feeding frenzy, but who knows what 3i/ATLAS has encountered or indeed wherefrom it has its absolute origin.

3i/ATLAS hyperbolic orbit around the Sun – The planets orbit the sun anticlockwise and all but Venus and Uranus spin on their axis anticlockwise west to east (hence the sun and stars rotate over our sky from east to west). 3i/ATLAS approaches side-on (perpendicular) to our sun and planetary disc in a wide arc clockwise (viewed from above) on a much faster hyperbolic orbit, and same direction our sun travels around the galactic centre of the Milky Way, the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A.

Comes to pass – Despite all the media hype, 3i/ATLAS isn’t alien technology, an inter-galactic spaceship or probe in search of intelligent life. It’s a special type of comet similar to our own solar system comet, Hartley 2, a very old semi-fragmenting short period comet, except 3i/ATLAS may be far more ancient given where it has come from on its extraordinary lonely cosmic journey. That makes it kind of very special, as the universe blinks only once in this ‘eternity space-time’ flyby, right in front of us.

Scientifically and cosmologically, interstellar objects, wandering comets and particularly 3i/ATLAS along with our understanding of stellar formation provide unparalleled insights into the history of star formation in our galaxy, the Milky Way.

First was 1i/Oumuamua – named after the Hawaiian word for ‘a messenger from afar arriving first’ because it was the first object confirmed to have originated from outside our solar system, first detected by an observatory in Hawaii, and appears to be more asteroidal in appearance.

Second came 2i/Borisov – named after Gennady Borisov, the Crimean amateur astronomer who first detected it, and more of your typical comet look.

Third comes 3i/ATLAS fast approaching – first detected on 1 July 2025 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System station at Río Hurtado, Chile, and cometary.

And from the local family group Halley’s Comet – our Solar System’s most well-known solar-cosmic flyer, a short-period comet returning to the inner Solar System and visible by naked eye from Earth on average every 76 years. It was first observed and recorded by Chinese Astronomers in 240 BCE – Records of the Grand Historian or Shiji, but it was not until 1705 that the English astronomer Edmond Halley calculated and recognised the historical records as re-appearances of the same comet. Halley’s comet reaches beyond the planet Neptune, as far as the orbit of our dwarf planet, Pluto and the Kuiper Belt surrounding our Sun at aphelion before returning to the inner solar system. There are more distant long-period comets that return periodically over far longer periods of time from the Oort Cloud, but none such as 3i/ATLAS and its class, which appear to have come from as far as the inner clusters and fields of our galaxy, perhaps even the centre of our Milky Way, never to return to us.

So why the fuss? – Exactly that, it is the 3rd object ever known to have visited us once off (though there have been likely many in our geological past), it comes from deep galactic interstellar space not part of our own Solar System, it brings a fragment of our universe close up to us, having travelled for billions of years at incredible speeds relative to Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but takes so long getting here at a fraction of the speed of light, and thus inspires not least the scientific community and our collective imagination. This comet has done time for us in a way we couldn’t realise to tell the story due to our brief existence and the effects of General Relativity, even if we were handed a warp drive from a super advanced alien race, we’d be reporting back to our descendants thousands of years into the future. But we do have our modern day static time machines and instruments to look back in time like Hubble and James Webb.

Some get so excited they imagine we are about to have our first encounter with space travelling aliens – break or bust. It invokes those of us Star Trekkers who dream of being out there in space to explore new worlds. And then there’s those of us who stay at home, wax lyrical with poetry, and/or hit the deck on Mozart’s Lacrimosa from Requiem for the Dead in D Minor (1792) or snack on Pink Floyd.

  Look into the darkness
listen to the cosmic babble
  and know I am the light.

References & Further Reading

Two of NASA’s most powerful space telescopes take a closer look at comet 3i/ATLAS, find water and CO2 – Iain Todd, 29 August 2025, BBC Sky at News Magazine

A Rare Visitor From Beyond: Meet Interstellar Comet 3i/Atlas (3i/ATLAS video animation and story) – Astroforum, 5 July 2025

Everything We Know About 3i/ATLAS, the New ‘Oumuamua (3i/ATLAS, Oumuamua & Boris, the bigger picture ) – Astrum, August 2025 YouTube

New interstellar object 3i/ATLAS: Everything we know about the rare cosmic visitor – Jamie Carter, 7 July 2025, Space.com

SPHEREx and JWST reveal what comet 3i/ATLAS is… and isn’t – Dr Ethan Siegel, 26 August 2025, Big Think

3i/ATLAS – Science NASA

Oumuamua, first known interstellar object to visit our solar system – Science/NASA

What We Know – And Don’t Know – About ‘Oumuamua’ (Article) – Science/NASA, 27 June 2018

Here’s the Picture We’ve Been Waiting for. Hubble’s Photo of Interstellar Comet 2i/Borisov – 17 October 2019, Universe Today

Comet 2i/Borisov (Time lapse 37 images captured by HUBBLE 9 December 2019 – 24 February 2020) – Science/NASA

Interstellar Comet 2i/Borisov Formed in a Very Cold Environment – Matthew Williams, 21 April 2020, Universe Today

Interstellar Objects (Scientific Paper) – Seligman & Moro-Martin, Dept. of Astronomy Carl Sagan Institute, Cornell University, 4 April 2023

The Kinematic Age of 3i/ATLAS and its Implications for Early Planet Formation (Scientific Paper) – Taylor & Seligman, Depts. of Astronomy and Physics, University of Michigan, 8 August 2025

Great Comets in History – Donald K Yeomans, April 2007, JPL/NASA

Take a 3D flight through our galaxy – Iain Todd, BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 17 September 2025

Crossing Eternity (Interstellar Poetry) – Barddylbach, 21 August 2017, AllPoetry

1) Sidebar & Update 4 September 2025

The Origin of Water on Earth is as Old as the Story of Our Universe and the Elements Manufactured by the Stars – Ancient, Past and Present

Well here’s the cosmological reasoning – Water/Ice was delivered by the collision of interstellar comets like 3i/ATLAS, many inner and outer solar system comets, asteroids and meteors from the reservoir of planetary nebulae, formation of current generation stars – planetary formation and early protoplanet collisions, like in our Sun and Solar System 4.6 billion years ago. Emerging star systems like ours have a ubiquitous supply of water as frozen ice-rock or nuclei for delivery to emerging planets during disc accretion and consolidation over a few billion years – late heavy bombardment, and continuing to present day. Until matter collides and stars form it’s very cold and lonely out there in interstellar space among the clouds and elements left behind from previous stars.

Ice is made up of two parts Hydrogen and one part Oxygen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and going down the periodic table Carbon followed by Oxygen (two of the lighter elements in the periodic table) are pretty much scattered throughout the galaxy in planetary nebulae, gas clouds, stellar formation and star systems. Main sequence stars like our Sun, as they grow eventually run out of Hydrogen, start to produce Carbon and Oxygen and a few other light elements eg Lithium and Nitrogen in their core through fusion and increased mass/gravity, which become their secondary fuel. When stars die, they blow off their coronal mass and mantle, dispersing those elements as planetary nebulae into interstellar space as part of an endless recycling scheme – nothing’s lost, just transformed, Newtonian physics applies to matter just as it does to motion (we humans could learn from this universal lesson… the recycling bit, if the universe can do this so efficiently without conscious thought, why the hell can’t we!). These first and second generation stars leave behind dense cores, White Dwarfs having dispersed these primal elements in abundance into interstellar space for the next generation of stars and stellar systems like our solar system today. So there are huge ‘oceans’ or ‘clouds’ (nebula clusters) scattered across our galaxy that contain water in the form of ice, and of course elemental Hydrogen and Oxygen.

‘3i/ATLAS has a nucleus of ice-water, rock-hard in interstellar space (a remnant from these processes a few billion years ago) and coma comprising of carbon dioxide, and other elements, its tail lengthening as it rounds the sun (over the next couple of months)’. Of course this comet won’t deliver its payload to Earth, because like many, it will glide gracefully by at interstellar speeds on its hyperbolic orbit out of our solar system, continuing its extraordinary journey to its next encounter in our Milky Way. Meanwhile many of the 1000+ near-Earth asteroids and meteors larger than 1 kilometre, continue on their elliptical orbits around the sun, currently mapped and tracked by the NASA ATLAS project till one of these pose a threat. Smaller meteors and micro-meteors enter our atmosphere almost every day, mostly vaporising in the Mesosphere above our Stratosphere.

Larger stars beyond their main sequence phase become Red Giants and eventually explode (Supernovae) much of their coronal mass and mantle, and newly manufactured periodic elements are ejected into interstellar space, having manufactured heavier elements and iron cores as fuel that nuclear fusion processes can no longer sustain to counter gravity, and so collapse shedding their outer mass to form ultra dense and powerful Neutron Stars or Black Holes at their core. The first generation stars in our universe 13.6 billion years ago were huge fast burning giant factories, quite different from the stars in our galaxy today. However, they may have left a larger concentration of neutron stars and black holes towards the centre of our galaxy where 3i/ATLAS may have wandered out from, clustered around the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A at its centre.

So our world and life is made of star dust – rock, water and atmosphere, delivered over aeons of time to this unique place in the universe, Earth under the gaze of our local creator, guardian and ultimate destroyer, the Sun.

2) Update 8 September 2025

Best Views at Time of Passing Comet 3i/ATLAS

Interstellar comet is about to make extremely close passes of Earth, Mars and the Sun – ‘Our best views of 3i/ATLAS and gathering data on this interstellar visitor, may come not from observatories on Earth or in Earth orbit, but from spacecrafts on and orbiting other planets’.

‘3i/ATLAS’s closest approach to Earth will be on 19 December 2025 at a distance of around 240-270 million km. It will make its closest approach to the Sun earlier around 30 October 2025, at 210 million km (when it might be most easily visible from Earth, having developed its tail at perihelion, as it rounds the sun on its hyperbolic path through our inner Solar System). At this point, it will be located between Mars orbit and the Sun, travelling at 25,000 km/h (this figure seems to be at deference to other reports estimated at far faster interstellar velocities relative to our Sun of 210,000-220,000 km/h), while making its closest approach to Mars on 3 October 2025, at a distance of (around) 28 million km’.

‘This raises the prospect of some robotic rovers and other spacecraft currently in our Solar System capturing a glimpse of 3i/ATLAS – images showing the oldest comet we know of, which originated around a distant star (deep inside our Milky Way nearer the galactic centre), as seen from Mars. The HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter could be used to spy the comet, and Rovers on Mars’.

Interstellar comet 3i/ATLAS will fly by Mars 1 month from now and Europe’s Red Planet orbiters will be ready – ‘The European Space Agency (ESA) is preparing for a unique opportunity to study the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas from what could be the best vantage point in the solar system. As it turns out, it may be observations from Mars, not Earth, that give us our closest look at the comet. 3i/ATLAS will come within 30 million km of Mars, while it will only come within 270 million km of Earth. That means spacecraft orbiting Mars are in play’.

‘ESA will employ both Mars Express and the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft to make observations. There are other spacecraft around Mars that could be repurposed to take advantage of the 3I/ATLAS close approach as well. These include NASA’s aging Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) Orbiter and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). China also has its Tianwen-1 Orbiter, which carries a high-resolution camera comparable to that of MRO’.

Alas, Elon Musk and SpaceX have missed out on their fantasy mission to Mars, where he could have been first to say hello to our auspicious interstellar traveller. He’ll have to invent a warp drive, actually not being a scientist or physicist he will have to travel into the future and buy one – so good luck with that, or teach himself how to fold space (whichever is easier or cheaper) if he wants to lay chase.

3) Update 29 September 2025

Eyes on Mars

Comet 3i/ATLAS is approaching Mars – Here’s a glimpse of what that might look like (close up) from our latest interstellar visitor’s perspective, based on observational flights and surveys we have already conducted – noting the comet won’t get quite as close to Mars as we already have.

Fly by Mars – Flight around Ares Vallis, European Space Agency, 20 November 2024. ESA’s Mars Express ‘takes us on a flight over curving channels, streamlined islands and muddled ‘chaotic terrain’ on Mars, soaking up rover landing sites along the way. This beautiful flight around the Oxia Palus region of Mars covers a total area of approximately 890 000 km², more than twice the size of Germany. Central to the tour is one of Mars’s largest outflow channels, Ares Vallis. It stretches for more than 1700 km and cascades down from the planet’s southern highlands to enter the lower-lying plains of Chryse Planitia. Billions of years ago, water surged through Ares Vallis, neighbouring Tiu Vallis, and numerous other smaller channels, creating many of the features observed in this region today’.

Hera Space Mission – Launched on 7 October 2024 is the first planetary defence spacecraft developed by the European Space Agency (ESA): Primary mission, to study the Didymos binary asteroid system that was impacted in 2022 by NASA‘s DART spacecraft, and contribute to validation of the kinetic impact method to deviate a near-Earth asteroid from a collision trajectory with Earth. Hera asteroid mission’s Mars fly by and around Deimos took place on 12 March 2025. Hera got its gravity assisted trajectory from Mars onto its final destination to Didymos in the Asteroid Belt, shortening its trip and saving fuel, arriving on 28 December 2026.

Why are we going back to this asteroid? European Space Agency, 7 October 2024

View from Mars

In a few days from now on 3 October 3i/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Mars. Current observational data since its discovery on 1 July 2025 has raised a few intriguing questions with respect to its size, trajectory, non-gravitational acceleration (not due to the gravitational pull of the sun as it approaches) and composition.

Observations in August by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) indicated an estimated mass loss from 3i/ATLAS of around 150 kilograms per second, with a calculated gas outflow of about 440 meters per second (as the comet approaches our inner solar system, it thaws and releases gas from its nucleus due to the warmth of the sun, contributing to minor non-gravitational acceleration and the comet’s tail becomes more prominent). When factoring this into momentum-balance equations, this indicates that the comet’s nucleus has a minimum mass of 33 billion tons and may be around five kilometres in diameter, if as expected it is largely composed of typical cometary carbon dioxide and ice (and a few other elements which may include iron and nickel). 3i/ATLAS may be considerably larger than the first confirmed interstellar objects 1i/Oumuamua (asteroidal, 2017) and 2i/Borisov (cometary, 2019), which astronomers had not expected given current models and limited amount of rocky material predicted to be found throughout interstellar space.

Small non-stellar/nebula objects found in the vast expanse of distant interstellar space are too small, frozen super cold, emit little or no light, and are too far away for us to detect or observe from Earth or anywhere in our Solar System, where we have observational technology and satellites deployed. So we know very little about them until they visit us. Voyager 1 and 2 are the only spacecraft to have reached the edge of our known solar system (the Sun’s heliosphere) in 2012 and 2018 respectively, where interstellar space begins. However they are a long way from the outer edge more commonly defined by the Oort Cloud. But our envoys on Mars and around Jupiter will get a closer look and better viewing angle of 3i/ATLAS as it passes through our inner solar system than we will from Earth (which will be obscured in part by the sun from late October to end of December). Hubble, JWST and powerful remote observatories on Earth may get a better look later as it exits, early next year on its hyperbolic orbit.

Large (while very small on the cosmic scale) interstellar objects passing through our solar system are considered relatively rare, and the alignment of 3i/ATLAS’ trajectory with the orbital plane of the planets around our Sun (to within 5 degrees) is quite intriguing and currently unexplained. Our solar system orbital plane is not closely aligned with the galactic plane of our Milky Way, and interstellar objects would not ordinarily be expected to be aligned with our solar system orbital plane either.

Additional observations in the days ahead from the HiRISE camera on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter could provide ueful new data on 3i/ATLAS’s mass, surface area, composition and behaviour on its final approach to the Sun. Additionally, next March, the object will pass close enough to Jupiter allowing potential observations by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

If these flybys allow us to collect the data needed to better determine size, composition and characteristics of 3i/ATLAS in the days ahead, it could substantively improve our understanding of far older rocky and cometary material believed to exist out there in interstellar space as distinct from asteroids, short-period and long-period comets, and planetary debris associated with our own solar system formation. It could also raise more questions if the findings are quite different from what we find locally or what we might have expected elsewhere in our galaxy, not least put to bed speculation of artificial or technological origin, evidence or signs of intelligent life forms scouting from beyond our solar system, despite the remote possibility of being an interstellar harbinger and object of delivery.

4) Sidebar & Update 8 October 2025

Origin of Rogue Planets in Interstellar Space – Other Wanderers Without a Star

Planetary formation may precede a star or brown dwarf during accretion and later collapse under gravity to become a star. So you could say it is the first born planet in a solar system, in which other planets are concurrently or subsequently form. Jupiter could have been a brown dwarf star if 13 times greater mass or part of a star binary system if it had grown at the same rate as the sun during disc accretion in our early solar system.

However this also explains rogue planets traversing interstellar space without a star, not just bumped out of an existing solar system during planetary collisions and formation, or by another passing star that came too close. Rogue planets wander through our galaxy without a star like interstellar comets such as 3i/ATLAS, but there the comparison ends – their origins, structure, far greater mass, energy, matter, evolution and trajectories are fundamentally different. While rogue planets may have formed from either previous generation star remnants and matter or pre-stellar (virgin) nurseries and nebulae and still growing through periodic disc accretion, interstellar comets are more likely to have come from another solar system or planetary nebula, since they are known to be composed of elements like ice, oxygen, carbon and heavier elements such as methane formed within a star or upon its death (supernova). However, it should be noted we have observed only three interstellar objects directly (cometary or asteroidal in origin) to date since 2017, and only just begun scientific observation of distant rogue planets; brown dwarfs and exoplanets (around other stars), first discovered in 2000; and 1995 respectively. We should also note that brown dwarfs (which are technically not stars at all) are also quite different from red dwarfs… ha ha just kidding, these red dwarfs and white dwarfs which are very different stages of a main sequence star.

Of course we are all ‘roaming’ through our galaxy as we complete one galactic revolution every 250 million years thereabouts. Our solar system is a natural interstellar fleet, the Sun our flagship, Earth our mothership and Jupiter the great protector and hammer thrower from the edge of our goldilocks zone. So a touch of cosmic truth in Greek and Norse mythology there – just fancy that. We will likely have many more close encounters with interstellar comets on our star bound journey than more distant sub-stellar objects like rogue planets or brown dwarfs, just as we might expect of other stars. Our closest neighbour being Proxima Centauri at 4.35 light years away, and travelling very much in the same direction, but at a different velocity relative to us (as if it were on an inside lane, it will eventually pass us by) on our outer spiral arm of the galaxy. The recently discovered rogue planet, Cha 1107-7626 on the other hand is a cool 620 light years away and in a very different lane altogether in our time-lapse cosmic race around the Milky Way – kind of reminds me a little of the childhood fable, ‘the tortoise and the hare’, as Mars moves more slowly round the Sun than Earth, and Jupiter slower still. Unlike our fable however, no-one gets anywhere sooner in space-time, we all just move around together and relative to each other, breathless and endlessly into that good night.

3i/ATLAS live update as it flew past Mars

Here are some great sources and links emerging as it happens (which weren’t available when we published the original AIM Network article above, 5 weeks ago), including quick reference summaries and comments/recommendations.

With NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System interactive app, you can follow comet 3i/ATLAS as it travels through our solar system and see where it’s headed next. This is a great tracker to play with.

It’s Here: First Close Image of 3i/ATLAS Revealed by Mars Orbiters and It Reveals new details – NASA Space News, 6 October 2025: The interstellar comet 3i/ATLAS just flew past Mars, giving Orbiters from NASA, ESA, and China a chance to observe a visitor from another star system up close. JWST data shows it’s rich in CO₂ is unlike any comet we’ve seen before. This is probably our best video clip scientific update on 3i/ATLAS to date.

ESA’s ExoMars and Mars Express observe comet 3i/ATLAS – Science & Exploration, European Space Agency, 7 October 2025: Between 1-7 October, ESA’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express spacecraft turned their eyes towards interstellar comet 3i/ATLAS, as it passed close to Mars. The two Mars orbiters had the closest view of the comet of all ESA spacecraft. During its closest approach to the Red Planet on 3 October 2025, the interstellar interloper was 30 million km away from them. This is what we’ve really been waiting for with latest real time imaging of 3i/ATLAS! And next month, we will observe the comet with our Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice).

Comet 3i/ATLAS – frequently asked questions – European Space Agency: For those getting started and have more questions.

Extreme Negative Polarisation of New Interstellar Comet 3i/ATLAS – Zuri Gray et al (International collaboration), 8 September 2025 (Draft version): Journal article for scientific and technical enthusiasts.

Astronomers Detect Water Activity in Interstellar Object 3i/ATLAS – Sci News, 7 October 2025: Informative and links nicely with first update on 4 September 2025, ‘The origin of water on Earth..’

Interstellar object 3i/Atlas spotted passing by Mars in new images (European Space Agency’s ExoMars Orbiter) – NBC News, 8 October 2025: Despite Trump’s government shut down, some stuff is getting out on our interstellar visitor.

Something Weird is Happening With 3i Atlas – The Space Race, YouTube, 5 October 2025: But don’t get carried away on the conspiracy theory and wow factor speculations we typically hear coming out of the USA, there are far more plausible and natural explanations for each of the ‘weird stuff’ raised, which are barely mentioned at all. Some interesting features and illustrations and for those with a little imagination.

Interstellar object 3i/ATLAS passed Mars last night – EarthSky, 3 October 2025: A different perspective and the question of where 3i/ATLAS came from, good read – ‘With the help of the Gaia space observatory’s data on stars, for the past 12 years, Gaia collected data on billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy, precisely noting their positions and determining their motions… stars were too far from 3i/ATLAS (estimated path) to meaningfully impact its trajectory,  they didn’t find a star along 3i/ATLAS’s path that might have been responsible for bringing this 3rd-known interstellar object to us’.

Interstellar comet 3i/ATLAS may come from the mysterious frontier of the early Milky Way, new study hints – Brandon Spektor, Live Science, 6 October 2025: Corroborates the above EarthSky article on where 3i/ATLAS might have come from, good read. ‘Object from the wild frontier… This led the team to postulate that “3i/ATLAS is a very old object, that has been traveling for [billions of years], and that its origin belongs to the border of the thin disk (of the Milky Way’s galactic centre),” Pérez-Couto said.

3i/ATLAS Cosmic Visitor Discovery Shocks NASA & Astronomers – Blackwell Lab, 8 October 2025: Don’t be fooled by the lead image of a spaceship to keep alien spotters amused, some great summaries and implications in understanding the origins of our galaxy and place in the cosmos. ‘possibly the most ancient cosmic visitor Earth has ever encountered… This is not just another comet – it’s a time traveler from the depths of space, carrying secrets that could reshape our understanding of the galaxy and the formation of planetary systems’.

‘3i/ATLAS is not only unique chemically, it is also massive. Observations from NASA’s SPHEREx spacecraft revealed that its coma – the cloud of gas and dust surrounding the nucleus spans up to 26,400 by 24,700 kms, nearly twice the diameter of Earth’.

‘The discovery of 3i/ATLAS reminds us that Earth is part of a vast galactic ecosystem. Interstellar objects like this comet may carry the building blocks of planets, chemistry, and perhaps even life itself, traversing the vast distances between stars (in our galaxy)’.

‘Observing 3i/ATLAS is like opening a time capsule from the early galaxy. It provides a glimpse of conditions that existed before our Sun and planets were born, billions of years ago’ –

Yet it is right here on our doorstep for a brief visit, closer than it appears to have been to any other star system we know about, but what if we could catch up with it, rendezvous and explore it. The big question on our lips is just where/how far it has come from within our galaxy, and how long ago? The answer to which we will never be able to travel to ourselves in thousands or millions of years unless we figure out how to fold space, travel through wormholes or invent an interstellar jump drive. But we will never be able to go back in space-time on any known theory of quantum mechanics or relativity, and space-time itself between the stars expands out of range and eventually out of sight. Some physicists now say space-time itself is not a dimension, it may not even exist, no fourth dimension, but an emergent property or illusion, or at best an event, but we can’t say categorically time exists – If this is so how could we ever visit an ancient moment or place in time again, or even the one that just passed. If 3i/ATLAS came from a remote place in the centre of our galaxy 7-8 billion years ago, that place, location and time would have evaporated long ago, at best we might observe the light that comes from it, but that region of space-time and event itself has long since been and gone. But the 3i/ATLAS is right here now on our doorstep like the cosmic messenger it is – and if that is too hard to fathom, let’s at least enjoy the music and myth.

5) Update 25 October 2025

Comet 3i/ATLAS looks like a comet, behaves like a comet, many quacks quacking

Despite all the hype still floating around in the interstitial spaces of the internet and popular mainstream media, comets are observable and largely scientifically predictable, even though the recent controversial three from interstellar space have many quacks quacking. The most commonly cited by the popular press emanates from the repetitive overtures of Avi Loeb, an Israeli and American theoretical physicist from Harvard, who pops up every time – first with ‘one eye’ Oumuamua in 2017, then ‘two eye’ Borisov in 2019, and now he has many quacks quacking across the internet on ‘three eye’ Atlas, triggering a plethora of comatose pseudo-scientific and ‘aliens are here’ groups and pages as horns, tails and molecules popping out of places you might arguably prefer not to imagine. And as tedious as it is to avoid them all in our Facebook feeds, we get them from the Daily Mail, News Corp, Sky News, Fox and even a few who would consider themselves respectable journalistic sources. But bugger the science, for a scientist there is no excuse. Still, a time will come, more likely when we least expect it, when after all the wolves have cried and howled and all but the ocean waves have fallen silent rolling beneath the twinkling stars, and even then it will more likely be a rogue comet, asteroid or meteorite to knock us off our perch.

So here’s the latest –

Interstellar Object 3i/ATLAS tail appears to have changed direction – James Felton, IFLScience, 24 October 2025

Interstellar comet 3i/ATLAS blasts a jet towards the sun in new telescope image – Elizabeth Howell, SpaceCom, 25 October 2025: ‘The interstellar comet is behaving just like one from our solar system’.

Comet 3i/ATLAS: NASA missions are working together to track and study this rare, interstellar comet as it passes through our solar system (accessed 25 October 2025).

…oops I didn’t cite the quacks and howlers, space is a more sober affair. I prefer to travel the stars with the wonders of science and tools we have, and in my dreams and imagination, a good science fiction novel will suffice – There have been some amazing ones around for years.

6) Update & Sidebar 1 November 2025

Comet 3i/ATLAS – Nickel, glowing brighter than expected, after it emerges from behind the Sun, next rendezvous with Juice, Juno and Jupiter. And be careful who you listen to, especially if they appear to be human or AI screaming ‘alien brain salad hysteria’ on YouTube. And don’t miss the haunting flypast Ganymede and Jupiter!

Latest News on Comet 3i/ATLAS: Is it an Alien Spaceship? – StarwalkSpace (Sky Tonight), 22 October 2025 – 3i/ATLAS passing through our inner solar system and now behind our Sun (conjunction) – will re-emerge after perihelion at the end of November at 1.8 AU distance from Earth. Next close up view from NASA-Juno and ESA-Juice spacecraft as comet flies past Jupiter and onward on its hyperbolic trajectory outward… back into the haunting depths of interstellar space. Our brief encounter with an 8 billion year old plus wanderer from the centre of our Milky Way – Alien spacecraft extremely unlikely, acting like a predictable comet, an interstellar cousin to our own family of comets from the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud.

Awakening an interstellar wanderer: Surprising nickel detection in Comet 3i/ATLAS – Rohan Rahatgaonkar & Darryl Seligman, SpaceCom, 28 October 2025 – The chemical signatures we’re observing may reflect both the comet’s ancient origins and its long journey through interstellar space.

Interstellar invader Comet 3i/ATLAS is still full of surprises — An unexpected brightening has scientists baffled – Robert Lea, SpaceCom, 1 November 2025. No, it’s not firing its impulse engines or slamming on the breaks preparing for deployment behind the sun. The brightening (more than our solar system Oort Cloud/Kuiper Belt planetary comets) could be due to its greater speed, its differing chemical composition affecting the sublimation of cold (solid/frozen) elements, mineral and metals to gas as it warms near the sun, interaction with the variable solar winds, magnetic fields, coronal mass ejections and prominences (solar activity from the corona of the sun), or even the instrumentation of different observation spacecraft. It is after all behind the sun right now from where Earth is and under recent observations up to 29 October by STEREO-A and STEREO-B, twin spacecrafts, Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and the weather satellite GOES-19. NOAA’s GOES-19 satellite is now primary GOES-East satellite – Video. Here’s ESA’s SOHO project overview studying our Sun. Further examination past perihelion when it emerges from behind the Sun might narrow down what is happening and the cause of this phenomenon – alongside Avi Loeb’s Earth bound alien expeditionary boarding fleet – ‘a simple smile will suffice!’

Brian Cox issues defiant response after expert warned us to ‘brace ourselves’ for mystery ‘alien spaceship’ – Lad Bible, 29 October 2025 – Professor Brian Cox has taken to social media to speak (out) about the theories, ‘the drivel’. It surprises me that Harvard University would condone this so called astrophysicist’s populist American-Jewish nonsense – trying to make a name for himself – an opportunist, a charlatan – you have to wonder about the content of his university lectures and research bias, or is he just competing with Trump for MAGA, fame and fortune… best game in the galaxy, never happened before, the constant drivel in our brainwashed sensationalist factional media! Brian Cox on the other hand, conveys the humble sentiments of science, reason, wisdom, awe. Be careful who you listen to, especially if they appear to be human.

How long might it take from origins of life to space travel capable intelligent beings like us – Professor Brian Cox with Guy Nancarrow (on the Cosmos), 16 October 2025

One thing that might surprise you, if not very disturbing has nothing to do with 3i/ATLAS – It is the plethora of YouTube clips, webpages and fake news sources spewing out their ‘alien brain salad hysteria’, so bizarre! I suspect it is a crowd of American secular, pseudo scientific fanatics, commercial cowboys or bible belt enthusiasts, who have deployed AI to feed us MAGA Astronomical cabbage, as this lonely 8 billion year old comet transits behind the Sun. Don’t let them knock you off balance and steal the beautiful limelight of our galactic visitor – it is unpleasant as much as it isn’t funny and hugely deceitful or delusional to hijack its extraordinary journey through the cosmos.

I’ll wrap up this update with something far more engaging, serene and enlightening – something scientific and musical. Imagine, your shoe on the other foot, that you were 3i/ATLAS on its dignified approach to Jupiter, which it will be before its closest brush with our ‘mythological’ gas giant at a distance of about 54 million kilometres (0.36 AU) on 16 March 2026 (that’s about twice the distance it came to Mars, one quarter the distance it came to our Sun, and five times closer than it will ever come to Earth on 19 December 2025, 6 days before Christmas – in other words this interstellar comet stayed well clear of Earth on its friendly trajectory and plain through our inner solar system, past our immediate neighbours, Mars, Jupiter and the Sun), how thoughtful…

So don’t miss this haunting flypast Ganymede and Jupiter (special feature of this update) – If 3i/ATLAS had a pair of eyes what might it see on its way out of our Solar system – perhaps our most impressive planet, Jupiter and here already captured by us humans albeit a little closer than 3i/ATLAS will actually fly – Juno flies past the Moon Ganymede and Jupiter to the music of Vangelis – ‘if I had a composer’s ears and eyes’.

Who needs to ‘shock and awe’ humanity with a suspicious alien probe when we already have Juno and rock stars to fly us all the way to Jupiter. A special treat for our 3^rd interstellar visitor 3i/ATLAS (What is actually happening with 3i/ATLAS, 27 October 2025) – if sentient and craft like us to entertain it on its lonely passage through and out to the stars on the other side.

Previous related Article: First city on Mars – What’s it called? 18 April 2025 with special feature ‘click-on-chart’ detailed poster map of Mars

Dear reader, we need your support

Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.

One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.

With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.

Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969