Rare Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Now Visible in Virgo through Telescopes

Astronomers Track Rare Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS as It Speeds Away from the Sun in November.

On November 16, watch a live stream from the Virtual Telescope Project to view detailed telescopic images of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it increase speed away from the sun on its escape route from the orbit of the solar system.

Comet 3I/ATLAS was found on July 1st of this year, and an analysis of its trajectory quickly verified that it was just the third interstellar object to ever reach its solar system. Only lately has the interstellar comet emerged from behind its parent star, having made its closest approach to the sun on October 30 during what astronomers refer to as perihelion.

On November 11, Gianluca Masi, the founder of the Virtual Telescope Project, took a stunning photograph of comet 3I/ATLAS that showed the interstellar invader's bright core coma and growing smoke-like ion tail being blown away by the solar wind.

Currently, in the hours just before dawn in mid-to-late November, 3I/ATLAS can be seen rising above the eastern horizon and passing through the Virgo constellation's stars.

A small backyard telescope will be able to resolve 3I/ATLAS's glowing middle coma as a fuzzy blob of diffuse light against the sharper points of the stars beyond, but its estimated magnitude, or brightness of +10.9 makes it too dark to see with just one eye.