After Hubble Space Telescope’s observations, James Webb Space Telescope and another newer observatory known as SPHEREx had their own opportunities to document the intriguing comet.<\/p>\n
Two more of NASA’s space telescopes recently got another look at comet 3I\/ATLAS<\/a>, a captivating interstellar interloper that first captured the world’s attention in July.<\/p>\n The object \u2013 just the third ever to be observed in Earth’s\u00a0cosmic<\/a>\u00a0neighborhood originating from another solar system \u2013 was first observed by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which captured what the U.S. space agency bills as “the sharpest-ever picture<\/a>” of 3I\/ATLAS.<\/p>\n Now, the James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> and another newer observatory known as SPHEREx had their own opportunities to document the intriguing comet, which has been drifting through interstellar space for billions of years. While the scientific community is largely in agreement that 3I\/ATLAS poses all the telltale characteristics of a comet,\u00a0a controversial astrophysicist from Harvard University\u00a0stirred up public fascination when he began claiming it could be an alien spaceship<\/a>.<\/p>\n The world’s scientists and space agencies may not be buying such a sensational theory, but they’re still trying to get a better idea of just what the comet is and from where it came.<\/p>\n What is 3I\/ATLAS comet?<\/p>\n A likely comet known as 3I\/ATLAS<\/a> made news in July when it was confirmed to have originated outside Earth’s solar system<\/a>, which makes it just one of three known interstellar objects ever discovered in our cosmic neighborhood.<\/p>\n What’s more, the object, which scientists estimate to be more than 12 miles wide, is whizzing at 130,000 miles per hour relative to the sun on a trajectory that on Oct. 30 will bring it within\u00a0about 130 million miles of Earth, according to NASA.<\/p>\n A telescope in Chile \u2013 part of the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS \u2013 was the first to spot what initially looked like an unknown asteroid on a path approaching Earth\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n The observation 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, eventually confirmed to almost certainly be a comet and named 3I\/ATLAS, was later confirmed to have interstellar origins after follow-up observations.<\/p>\n NASA telescopes get another look at interstellar comet: See photos<\/p>\n Though the object poses no threat to Earth, astronomers and the world’s space agencies are still intrigued enough to want to observe 3I\/ATLAS as closely as possible.<\/p>\n NASA’s iconic Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> previously got a glimpse of the comet in July, collecting data that allowed astronomers to estimate the size<\/a> of the comet\u2019s solid, icy nucleus as anywhere from 1,000 feet to 3.5 miles wide. Hubble’s observations may have helped pinpoint the comet’s size, but scientists still have not determined what comprises its core, nore precisely where in the cosmos it originated.<\/p>\n The James Webb Space Telescope then observed<\/a> the interstellar object Aug. 6 in near-infrared light<\/a>, followed by the newer SPHEREx telescope from Aug. 7-Aug. 15<\/a>, to get a better idea of its physical properties and chemical makeup.<\/p>\n Here’s a look at the images each telescope captured:<\/p>\n More information about the observations from each telescope are available at online preprint research repositories, including Webb’s findings at Zenodo<\/a> and SPHEREx’s data on arxiv<\/a>.<\/p>\n What is the James Webb Space Telescope?<\/p>\n The James Webb Space Telescope launched<\/a> on Christmas Day 2021 aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the European Space Agency’s Ariane\u00a0Space Spaceport in French Guiana.<\/p>\n Webb, which then began its cosmic operations in July 2022, was designed to operate for up to 10 years<\/a>. But as fortune would have it, the mission team determined the observatory should have enough propellant to allow it to operate in orbit for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n Billed by NASA as<\/a> “the largest, most powerful and most complex telescope ever launched into space,” the\u00a0James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> far surpasses the abilities of its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>. The observatory is named for NASA’s second-ever administrator.<\/p>\n Orbiting the sun rather than Earth, Webb<\/a>\u00a0is outfitted with a gold-coated mirror more than 21 feet in diameter and powerful infrared instruments to observe the cosmos like no instrument before.<\/p>\n Hubble, by the way, recently reached its own milestone in April<\/a> when it marked its 35th year since launching in 1990 on the space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.<\/p>\n What is SPHEREx? NASA launches telescope from California<\/p>\n In March, NASA\u00a0also\u00a0deployed into orbit its SPHEREx telescope<\/a>\u00a0to collect data on more than 450 million galaxies.<\/p>\n The telescope\u00a0got off the ground<\/a>\u00a0on March 12, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.<\/p>\n Scientists say the SPHEREx observatory, which became operational in May<\/a>,\u00a0will be able to get a wider view of the Milky Way galaxy<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 identifying objects of scientific interest that telescopes like Hubble and Webb can then study up close.<\/p>\n For the next 25 months, the SPHEREx observatory will orbit Earth more than 11,000 times while surveying and imaging the surrounding sky. When SPHEREx takes pictures of the sky, the light is sent to six detectors that can capture different wavelengths of light, or exposures.<\/p>\n By the mission’s end, NASA will weave hundreds of thousands of SPHEREx\u2019s images into digital sky maps.<\/p>\n Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Hubble Space Telescope’s observations, James Webb Space Telescope and another newer observatory known as SPHEREx had their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[76297,76299,13537,6626,13539,76296,675,40336,4647,2356,13559,15542,32021,76298,13541,13715,13532,622,19471,13538,27807,20231,31079,49781,8304,24391,13543,13535,3729,13555,13545,13558,718,13547,3,13531,13549,13470,13560,13544,13534,13551,79,13690,193,13554,9175,13550,13561,13110,13546,74,2615,1596,826,13557,13542,13556,6671,13536,13552,13533,404,12269,3447],"class_list":["post-118038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-oumuamua","tag-oumuamua-celestial-body","tag-air","tag-astronomy","tag-base","tag-bodies","tag-body","tag-ca-content-sharing-statewide","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-california-connect","tag-celestial","tag-comets","tag-comets-celestial-bodies","tag-connect","tag-content","tag-exploration","tag-fl","tag-fl-content-sharing-space","tag-force","tag-harvard","tag-harvard-university","tag-hubble","tag-hubble-telescope","tag-james","tag-james-webb-space-telescope","tag-know","tag-launches","tag-local","tag-local-connect","tag-modular","tag-modular-story","tag-nasa","tag-neutral","tag-news","tag-outer","tag-outer-space","tag-overall","tag-overall-neutral","tag-point","tag-rocket","tag-rocket-launches","tag-science","tag-sharing","tag-space","tag-space-connect","tag-space-exploration","tag-space-exploration-vehicles","tag-space-technology","tag-statewide","tag-story","tag-technology","tag-telescope","tag-the","tag-to","tag-to-the-point","tag-ttp","tag-ttp-what-we-know","tag-university","tag-vandenberg","tag-vandenberg-air-force-base","tag-vehicles","tag-we","tag-webb","tag-what"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}