The Blue Tail of Comet 3I/ATLAS
The tail of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is inverted, faint, and very difficult to photograph. Amateur astronomer Michael Jaeger has discovered the trick: “You have to use a blue filter,” he says. Jaeger and his colleague Gerald Rhemann obtained images of the enigmatic object on August 28. Here is one of the images: Jaeger and Rhemann […]
Hubble Calculates the Size of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS
Hubble’s observations are allowing astronomers to more accurately estimate the size of the comet’s solid icy nucleus. The upper limit on the diameter of the nucleus is 5.6 kilometers, though it could be as small as 320 metres across, researchers report. Though the Hubble images put tighter constraints on the nucleus size compared to previous […]