"The object, which is generally believed by experts to be a comet that's predominantly made up of carbon dioxide ice, is continuing on its highly eccentric trajectory, and is expected to make its closest pass of the Earth just days before Christmas on its way back out of our star system. And judging by the latest data, 3I/ATLAS has survived its perihelion - or its closest approach to the Sun - largely intact, instead of breaking apart,"
"New images of 3I/ATLAS, taken by the Nordic Optical Telescope on the Canary Islands, "show a single body, with no evidence for breakup following the perihelion passage two weeks earlier," Loeb conceded in a Wednesday followup post. The images also show 3I/ATLAS' prominent "anti-tail," an accumulation of jets that points towards the Sun, suspected to be made up of larger dust particles less affected by the Sun's radiation pressure."
3I/ATLAS has reemerged from behind the Sun and continues on a highly eccentric trajectory toward a close Earth pass days before Christmas. Observations indicate the object is likely a comet composed mainly of carbon dioxide ice. Latest data show the object survived perihelion largely intact rather than breaking apart. Images from the Nordic Optical Telescope show a single body with no breakup and reveal a prominent anti-tail formed by jets of larger dust particles. One hypothesis posits those jets are natural outgassing, while an alternative suggests they could be thrusters from a technological spacecraft attempting to accelerate away from the Sun.
Read at Futurism
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