"The object, which is widely believed to be comet, showed strong ultraviolet emissions that are unmistakable telltales of hydroxyl gas (OH), a byproduct of water, when astronomers imaged it with the with NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift space telescope before it disappeared behind the Sun. The emissions could only be spotted from space because the ultraviolet light would get absorbed in the atmosphere."
"Their findings, detailed in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, argue that the presence of all this OH indicates the comet is ejecting water vapor at a torrential rate of about 88 pounds per second - which is around the same rate as a fire hose running at full blast, according to a press release about the findings."
"Something else must be driving the water dumping in 3I/ATLAS - which also implies, tantalizingly, that the comet must harbor considerable stores of water for this process to keep going. "When we detect water - or even its faint ultraviolet echo, OH, - from an interstellar comet, we're reading a note from another planetary system," coauthor Dennis Bodewits, a professor of physics at Auburn TK, said in the release. "It tells us that the ingredients for life's chemistry are not unique to our own.""
Ultraviolet observations of 3I/ATLAS reveal strong hydroxyl (OH) emissions, a byproduct of water photodissociation. The Neil Gehrels Swift space telescope detected these ultraviolet features before the object passed behind the Sun, with the UV signals only observable from space due to atmospheric absorption. The OH emission corresponds to a water production rate near 88 pounds per second, comparable to a full-force fire hose. This intense outgassing occurred at roughly 3 astronomical units from the Sun, implying that solar heating alone cannot explain the activity and that another mechanism is driving water release. The object must contain substantial water stores to sustain such distant activity.
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