A spacecraft bound for Jupiter has caught a visitor from beyond our solar system.
This striking image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was imaged by the JANUS science camera aboard the European Space Agency‘s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) spacecraft; it reveals the object’s glowing coma and sweeping tail of gas and dust.
What is it?
Comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third known interstellar object ever detected passing through our solar system. Unlike most comets, which originate in the Kuiper Belt or the Oort Cloud, this icy wanderer formed around another star before drifting into our cosmic neighborhood.
The bright, egg-shape glow at the center of the image is the comet’s coma — a vast cloud of gas and dust released as sunlight heats the comet’s icy nucleus. Stretching away from the coma is a long tail sculpted by radiation from the sun and the prevailing solar wind.
The arrows in the top left show the direction the comet is traveling (blue) and the direction of the sun (yellow).
Why is it special?
JANUS captured this view on Nov. 6, 2025, just seven days after 3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to the sun. At the time, JUICE was about 41 million miles (66 million kilometers) away from the comet.
Throughout November, five of JUICE’s instruments — JANUS, MAJIS, SWI, PEP and UVS — observed the cosmic wanderer, collecting images and spectrometry data to determine its composition and activity.
But because JUICE was on the opposite side of the sun from Earth during these observations, data had to be transmitted at a slower rate, delaying scientists’ first glimpse of the results. The instrument teams had to wait until only last week to receive the data and are now working hard to analyze it all. They will come together in late March to discuss their findings.
