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 decided to try a blue filter after they heard that 3I/ATLAS is unusually rich in CO2. It reminded astronomers of another unusual comet, C/2016 R2, from our own Solar System. “Blue filters had already proven very successful with comet C/2016 R2, which had a similar composition, so we tried the same approach with 3I/ATLAS,” explains Jaeger.
Comets with a lot of carbon dioxide have blue tails because of photochemistry. Solar radiation breaks CO2 into CO+, which emits blue light. Is this happening in 3I/ATLAS? The jury’s still out. Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope found abundant CO2, but not much CO.
Stranger still, the blue tail points toward the sun. Normally, comet tails point away from the sun because gas and dust is pushed back by solar wind and radiation pressure. 3I/ATLAS’s tail does the opposite.
Is 3I/ATLAS really a comet? Our opinion is “yes,” but it’s a strange one.
Source: spaceweather.com