As the mysterious interstellar object known as 3I/ATLAS plummets through our Solar System, NASA's good old Hubble Space Telescope has captured the best look yet at the interstellar visitor.

On July 21, the interstellar interloper passed close enough to Earth — and to Hubble, which orbits us at about 320 miles above the planet — that the veteran space telescope was able to capture a surprisingly detailed image of it, NASA explains in a statement about the image.

In the space agency's incredible shot — the second the Hubble has captured since the discovery of 3I/ATLAS — a "teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust," as NASA calls it, is seen trailing behind the puzzling object, which many scientists suspect is a sizable interstellar comet.

Discovered a mere five weeks ago on July 1, 3I/ATLAS is only the third known interstellar object to pass through our solar system, with the first being the ever-mysterious 'Oumuamua back in 2017. As with that strangely elongated visitor, there is some speculation that 3I/ATLAS could be some sort of alien spacecraft — but NASA believes we're looking at the "solid, icy nucleus" of a comet.

That said, there's quite a lot about this interstellar visitor that is extraordinary — and unexplained.

In an editorial for Space.com last month, a pair of astrophysicists posited that 3I/ATLAS is much older than 'Oumuamua and 3I/Borisov, the second-ever recorded interstellar object discovered by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov back in 2019.

Those scientists, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor's Aster Taylor and Michigan State University's Darryl Seligman, suggested that this latest interstellar interloper could be anywhere from three to 11 billion years old, and cited its massive speeds of 134,000 mph relative to the Sun as the source of their hypothesis.

"Since the influence of the galaxy tends to speed up objects over time," the astrophysicists wrote, "this velocity implies that ATLAS is far older."

NASA has, meanwhile, proffered in its latest findings, which have been accepted into the Astrophysical Journal Letters, that 3I/ATLAS' nucleus may be as large as 3.5 miles across or as small as just 1,000 feet in diameter. The new Hubble image played a big role in those estimates, though as the agency noted in another statement, the "solid heart of the comet presently cannot be directly seen, even by Hubble."

While scientists continue to glean bits and pieces of information about this out-of-solar-system visitor, there's still one huge, outstanding question about 3I/ATLAS.

"No one knows where the comet came from," explained Hubble science leader David Jewitt in the statement. "It’s like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. You can't project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started on its path."

More on comets: Scientists Just Found Something Very Weird About the Mysterious Object Hurtling Into Our Solar System


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