The line-of-sight connecting 3I/ATLAS to Earth was misaligned with the line connecting 3I/ATLAS to the Sun by only 10 degrees on July 21, 2025, when the Hubble image was taken.
We explain the scattered sunlight around 3I/ATLAS as a result of ice fragments and not the commonly assumed refractory dust.
This coincidence brings 3I/ATLAS to pass within several tens of millions of kilometers from Mars, Venus and Jupiter.
3I/ATLAS is the first object known with this combination of low inversion angle and extreme negative polarization.
Let us harvest as much data as possible about 3I/ATLAS from all available telescopes on Earth and in space, since we might discover something new when 3I/ATLAS passes under the Sun.
In a new analysis (accessible here ) of the Hubble Space Telescope image of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS that I co-authored with my brilliant colleague, Eric Keto, the glow of scattered sunlight appears twice as long from the object towards the Sun than it is in the directions perpendicular or opposite to the Sun — where the extent of the glow appears to be the same.
