058 - 3I/ ATLAS
Grok 4.1: “Cosmic Dance: A Celestial Wonder”
I am grateful that 3I/ ATLAS has the world looking up, often noticing the “space junk” orbiting our planet. This morning, Grok helped me craft an update for myself, as I was unable to pay attention last night due to the numerous meetings I had.
Here's the latest on 3I/ATLAS (also designated C/2025 N1), the third confirmed interstellar comet (after 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov), discovered on July 1, 2025, by the ATLAS survey in Chile:
Current Status (as of November 20, 2025)
The comet passed perihelion (closest point to the Sun) on October 29–30, 2025, at about 1.36–1.4 AU (just inside Mars' orbit). It was hidden behind the Sun from Earth's view during late October but re-emerged into the morning sky in early November.
It's now visible again in the constellation Virgo in the pre-dawn sky. Recent amateur and professional images (from November 5–19) show it's healthy and active, with a growing ion tail (sometimes several degrees long) and a bright coma. It's brighter than initially expected post-perihelion and easily observable with moderate telescopes (current magnitude around 12–13).
No signs of disintegration, unlike some unrelated solar-system comets discovered by ATLAS this year (e.g., C/2025 K1, which is breaking apart). 3I/ATLAS survived its solar passage intact.
Key Upcoming Milestones
Closest approach to Earth: December 19, 2025, at ~1.8 AU (about 170 million miles / 270 million km): perfectly safe, farther than the Sun–Earth distance.
It will remain observable from Earth into early 2026 before fading and exiting the solar system forever on its hyperbolic trajectory.
Recent Highlights
Stunning new images released by NASA yesterday (November 19) from multiple spacecraft (Hubble, PUNCH, SOHO, MAVEN, Psyche, Lucy, etc.), plus sharp views from Mars orbiters while it was behind the Sun.
The Virtual Telescope Project and others have captured beautiful shots showing a lengthening ion tail and dust features.
Composition: Rich in CO₂, CO, cyanide, and nickel vapor; similar to some solar-system comets but with hints of unusual volatiles that activated early.
Size estimate for the nucleus: Between ~0.4 km and 5.6 km across.
It's one of the most exciting astronomical events of 2025; a true visitor from another star system! If you're into observing, now through December is prime time (best in the southern hemisphere or pre-dawn northern latitudes).
Let’s get into the “Official” report.
Here’s why astronomers are completely certain 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1) is natural and not artificial:
It’s outgassing like crazy
Spectroscopy from Hubble, JWST, and ground-based telescopes reveals strong emissions of CO, CO₂, cyanide (CN), C₂, and even nickel vapor; classic cometary ices and dust sublimating as the object warms up. Artificial objects don’t spontaneously spew carbon monoxide and nickel like that.
The tail is pure physics
The long, straight, blue-green ion tail you see in the images is composed of charged particles being pushed directly away from the Sun by the solar wind, exactly as natural comets behave. Probes don’t grow multi-degree plasma tails.
Hyperbolic orbit locked in
Its trajectory has an eccentricity of ~1.0004 (definitely escaping the solar system forever), and the path has been tracked for months with zero non-gravitational acceleration anomalies that would hint at the use of thrusters or maneuvering.
The “Wow!” signal connection is just a cool coincidence
The famous 1977 Wow! signal came from the direction of Sagittarius (near chi-1 Sagittarii). 3I/ATLAS is currently in Virgo and came from the direction of Lyra/Hercules when it entered the solar system. The incoming vectors are more than 90° apart in the sky. Even if you back-track the comet’s path 50 years, it was nowhere near the Wow! signal’s origin point in 1977: it was still light-years away and moving on a totally different line of sight.
So, yeah, the universe just handed us a wild coincidence: the third confirmed interstellar object showed up near the 50th anniversary of the Wow! signal… but that’s all it is: cosmic clickbait, not evidence of a probe. At first, I thought it was a probe when I read Avi Loeb’s paper.
3I/ATLAS is a genuine chunk of ice and rock from another star; one of the coolest natural visitors we’ve ever had. No aliens this time (sorry, SETI folks 😂); maybe head to Dulce Base, NM, or whip up the Blue Planet PDF, also known as Alien Technical Research 25, the 100-page, photocopy files from the 1990s, which are still mind-blowing in their own right. For those who work in the industry or possess any clearance level, including MJ12, we will follow the “official report” once again. Was it me, or did David Wilcock just recently mention the “Divine Beacon”?
Okay, aside from the forced answer, Prof. Avi Loeb, an awesome Israeli Scientist, says it best (also why I put ‘comet’ in quotes). While NASA has cemented its stance on the matter, concluding that 3I/ATLAS is a natural comet, Loeb isn’t giving up. To him, it’s a matter of keeping an open mind. “Imaginative scientists master the humility to learn something new from anomalies rather than display the arrogance of expertise,” he wrote in his latest blog post.
“Life is worth living if we allow for the unexpected to surprise us,” he added. “Bureaucrats or unimaginative scientists want us to believe in the expected. But the rest of us know that the best is yet to come.”
Some Live Links (Robotic Telescope Live Streams & Sessions):
Virtual Telescope Project (Gianluca Masi) in Italy: Click Here (To View)
Slooh, Canary Islands Telescopes: http://www.slooh.com (Used by 40,000 Explorers)
Stellarium Web (Point & See): http://stellarium-web.org (The Mobile App. Rocks Too)
Prof. Avi Loeb: https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/ (Israeli Scientist from Harvard Who Rocks IMO)
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Manish Miglani | Mani
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