what they show and why they have been published now

Recently the POT and the European Space Agency (ESA, abbreviation for English) announced new pictures about him Comet 3I/ATLAS.

These show the phenomenon even more clear than other photos previously taken of the organisms, allowing us to better observe their characteristics.

However, that is ATLAS When it comes closest to our planet, it will be possible to analyze it in detail, which is why experts are eagerly awaiting this event.

On Thursday, December 4th, it will take place POT shared a final image of the 3I/ATLAS taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits near the country.

In it the core of the comet appears clearly as White point In the middle, also in this color, you can see his coma, i.e. the bright atmosphere of gas and dust that surrounds him. In the background you can see some stars in the form of blue lines.

NASA captured this image on November 30, when Hubble was about 286 million kilometers from the comet.

The distance Is significantly less as the one who separated the telescope when it first photographed the object in late July, and That’s why we can only now see such a clear picture. of that.

However, in this unpublished photo You can’t see the tail well of the comet, which was formed as it approached the Sun as solar radiation pushed the sublimated ice in the opposite direction to the larger star.

The agency has not yet released data on this image, including details on the composition of the coma, but is likely to do so soon.

Also on Thursday, THE shared a new picture des ATLAS. Unlike NASA, this one only has the colors black and white, but shows some special features of the comet that the American organization has not revealed.

In the photo taken by the European Agency, in addition to a white dot representing the nucleus and the coma of the comet, you can also see two types of white lines emerging from it, which is a completely new thing: ATLAS could have not one but two queues.

“Not only do we clearly see the bright halo of gas surrounding the comet, the so-called coma, but also the hint of two tails,” ESA explains on its website.

Also explain what these queues would consist of and which direction each one would face. “The “Plasma Tail” The comet, made of electrically charged gas, extends towards the top of the image. We could see one too ‘dust tail’ fainter, consisting of tiny solid particles that extend to the bottom left of the image,” the article says.

The photo shared by this organization is one of many that this organization also took in November Jupiter’s Ice Moon Explorer (Juicefor its acronym in English).

Like Hubble, this device used the closest distance to the comet to capture the image and managed to discover it in all its glory because it captured it just after perihelion (the comet’s passage through the Sun’s surroundings), a time when the object was most active.

Juice followed 3I/ATLAS for two days with five scientific instruments. However, beyond this preliminary image, it is not yet known what these devices observed, and ESA reported that the full data set will not be achieved country until the end of February 2026.

He 3I/ATLASfirst reported on July 1, 2025, is the third interstellar object known (hence the name “3” “I”), after the discovery of 1I/Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019.

However, this comet has a number of peculiarities, such as very high speed and enormous size, that make it a different species from its predecessors. Therefore, the astronomical community is waiting for the day when it achieves its goal The closest point to Earth.

According to the POTthis will happen if it is placed at a distance of an estimated 1.8 Astronomical Units (approximately). 270 million kilometers) in relation to our planet.

According to the organization, the event will take place in December 2025 and despite alarming theories will not pose a threat for our planet because the object will be quite far away from it.

For its part, ESA went one step further and set the exact date when the comet will reach this point: the next one December 19th.

Although the phenomenon is not visible to the human eye, the time will come when specialized teams will be able to observe it more clearly. Scientists hope that getting closer to the object will allow us to clearly visualize the properties that distinguish it from other comets recorded in the past.