{"id":327427,"date":"2025-12-04T15:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/327427\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T15:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T15:34:07","slug":"comet-3i-atlas-shows-activity-in-juice-navigation-camera-teaser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/327427\/","title":{"rendered":"Comet 3I\/ATLAS shows activity in Juice navigation camera teaser"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>During November 2025, ESA\u2019s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Science_Exploration\/Space_Science\/Juice\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Juice<\/a>) used five of its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2022\/12\/Juice_s_science_instruments\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">science instruments<\/a> to observe 3I\/ATLAS. The instruments collected information about how the comet is behaving and what it is made of.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, Juice snapped the comet with its onboard Navigation Camera (NavCam), designed not as a high-resolution science camera, but to help Juice navigate Jupiter\u2019s icy moons following arrival in 2031.<\/p>\n<p>Though the data from the science instruments won\u2019t arrive on Earth until February 2026, our Juice team couldn\u2019t wait that long. They decided to try downloading just a quarter of a single NavCam image to see what was in store for them.\u00a0The very clearly visible comet, surrounded by signs of activity, surprised them.<\/p>\n<p>Not only do we clearly see the glowing halo of gas surrounding the comet known as its coma, we also see a hint of two tails. The comet\u2019s \u2018plasma tail\u2019 \u2013 made up of electrically charged gas, stretches out towards the top of the frame. We may also be able to see a fainter \u2018dust tail\u2019 \u2013 made up of tiny solid particles \u2013 stretching to the lower left of the frame. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2023\/11\/Structure_of_a_comet\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">More on the structure of a comet<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The image was taken on 2 November 2025, during Juice\u2019s first slot for observing 3I\/ATLAS. It was two days before Juice\u2019s closest approach to the comet, which occurred on 4 November at a distance of about 66 million km.<\/p>\n<p>We expect to receive the data from the five scientific instruments switched on during the observations \u2013 JANUS, MAJIS, UVS, SWI and PEP \u2013 on 18 and 20 February 2026. The delay is because Juice is currently using its main high-gain antenna as a heat shield to protect it from the Sun, leaving its smaller medium-gain antenna to send data back to Earth at a much lower rate.<\/p>\n<p>Though Juice was further from 3I\/ATLAS than <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Science_Exploration\/Space_Science\/ESA_s_ExoMars_and_Mars_Express_observe_comet_3I_ATLAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">our Mars orbiters were back in October<\/a>, it observed 3I\/ATLAS just after the comet\u2019s closest approach to the Sun, meaning that it was in a more active state. We expect to see clearer signs of this activity in the data from the science instruments. This includes not only images from JANUS \u2013 Juice\u2019s high-resolution optical camera \u2013 but also spectrometry data from MAJIS and UVS, composition data from SWI, and particle data from PEP.<\/p>\n<p>For the latest updates and FAQs related to comet 3I\/ATLAS, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/Science_Exploration\/Space_Science\/ESA_observations_of_interstellar_comet_3I_ATLAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">esa.int\/3IATLAS<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/ESA_Multimedia\/Images\/2025\/12\/Comet_3I_ATLAS_shows_activity_in_Juice_navigation_camera_teaser2\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Click here<\/a>\u00a0to download an annotated version of the image.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>[Image description: Grainy space image, with white dots on a dark background. At the centre of the image is a larger, bright white blob with a faint white line stretching towards the top of the frame.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During November 2025, ESA\u2019s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) used five of its science instruments to observe 3I\/ATLAS.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-327427","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}