Ready to get a better look at 3I\/ATLAS? Here’s what to know about the comet, and how to watch live today as NASA releases new photos of it.<\/p>\n
If you’ve been eagerly waiting to see more high-resolution images of a fascinating interstellar comet known as 3I\/ATLAS<\/a>, your wait is almost over.<\/p>\n NASA has announced that it will unveil a trove of 3I\/ATLAS imagery<\/a> captured by the space agency’s fleet of instruments both on the ground and up in space<\/a>. The impending photo-dump, set to take place during a public event Wednesday, Nov. 19, comes more than three months since NASA first released a high-res image captured by its Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>.<\/p>\n Since then, anticipation has been mounting for another glimpse of an object that has increasingly become a source of public obsession<\/a>.<\/p>\n First spotted by a ground telescope in Chile, 3I\/ATLAS has made waves as just the third-ever interstellar interloper originating from another star<\/a> spotted in Earth’s solar system. The object, which the world’s astronomers agree is a comet, also hasn’t been able to shake a persistent conspiracy theory<\/a> that it could be an alien spaceship<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ready to get a better look at 3I\/ATLAS? Here’s what to know about the comet<\/a>, and how to watch NASA release new photos of it.<\/p>\n What is 3I\/ATLAS?<\/p>\n An object known as 3I\/ATLAS<\/a> made news in July when it was confirmed to have originated outside Earth’s solar system<\/a>.<\/p>\n The observation \u2013 first made by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS \u2013\u00a0 was\u00a0reported to the\u00a0Minor Planet Center<\/a>, the official authority for\u00a0observing and reporting new asteroids<\/a>, comets and other small bodies in the solar system. The object is also now\u00a0catalogued<\/a>\u00a0by NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.<\/p>\n Observations of 3I\/ATLAS’s speed and trajectory confirmed to astronomers that it formed in another star system and was ejected into interstellar space \u2013 the region between the stars, according to NASA<\/a>. For potentially billions of years, the comet has drifted on a journey from the general direction of the constellation Sagittarius in the center of the Milky Way<\/a> that recently brought it into our solar system.<\/p>\n That makes 3I\/ATLAS just the third interstellar object ever spotted in Earth’s cosmic neighborhood.<\/p>\n NASA to release new photos of 3I\/ATLAS. Here’s how to watch<\/p>\n NASA will host a live event at 3 p.m. ET Wednesday, Nov. 19, to release never-before-seen photos of 3I\/ATLAS. The images have been collected from the U.S. space agency’s fleet of space and ground telescopes, as well as spacecraft orbiting other planets in our solar system, according to a press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n Taking place at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the event will also stream live online.<\/p>\n Coverage will be available on the agency’s streaming app,\u00a0NASA+<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 also available on YouTube\u00a0<\/a>and the agency\u2019s\u00a0X account<\/a> \u2013 as well as\u00a0Amazon Prime<\/a>. Netflix, which also provides some live NASA coverage<\/a>, including rocket launches, is not promoting the event on its platform.<\/p>\n While members of the media are asked to register to ask questions during the event, the public can also have their questions answered in real time by using #AskNASA on social media.<\/p>\n Webb, Hubble among telescopes to study interstellar visitor<\/p>\n Unlike comets bound to the sun’s gravity, 3I\/ATLAS is traveling on a hyperbolic orbit that will eventually carry it out of the solar system and back into interstellar space. That’s why the world’s astronomers and space agencies are\u00a0racing to study planetary material\u00a0that formed from another star.<\/p>\n A fleet of NASA space telescopes \u2013 including the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> and the James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> \u2013 have already returned images and data back to Earth<\/a> gathered from glimpsing the comet.<\/p>\n A ground telescope in Chile, Gemini South telescope<\/a>, also glimpsed the comet’s glowing tail<\/a> in September, while a pair of Mars orbiters observed 3I\/ATLAS<\/a> when it came within about 19 million miles of the red planet in October.<\/p>\n How big is 3I\/ATLAS?<\/p>\n Astronomers don\u2019t yet know exactly how big 3I\/ATLAS could be, but estimates range from a few hundred feet to a few miles across, according to the European Space Agency<\/a>. Hubble’s data also allowed astronomers<\/a> to\u00a0estimate the size\u00a0of the comet\u2019s solid, icy nucleus as anywhere from about 1,400 feet to 3.5 miles wide, according to NASA.<\/p>\n 3I\/ATLAS completes close approach to sun, heads toward Earth<\/p>\n The comet 3I\/ATLAS, which is not in danger of hitting Earth, is projected to make its closest approach to our planet on Dec. 19. On that day, the object will come within about 170 million miles of our planet \u2013 or about twice the distance between Earth and the sun.<\/p>\n