English

Palomar and Apache Point Spectrophotometry of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2025-07-17 v1 Astrophysics of Galaxies Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics

Abstract

On July 1st 2025 the third interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS or C/2025 N1 (ATLAS), was discovered, with an eccentricity of e=6.15±0.01e=6.15 \pm 0.01 and perihelion of q=1.357±0.001q=1.357\pm0.001 au. We report our initial visible to near-infrared (420-1000 nm) spectrophotometry of 3I/ATLAS using both the Palomar 200 inch telescope and Apache Point Observatory. We measure 3I/ATLAS to have a red spectral slope of 19 %/100 nm in the 420-700 nm range, and a more neutral 6 %/100 nm slope over 700-1000 nm. We detect no notable emission features such as from C2_2.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2507.11720,
  title  = {Palomar and Apache Point Spectrophotometry of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS},
  author = {Matthew Belyakov and Christoffer Fremling and Matthew J. Graham and Bryce T. Bolin and Mukremin Kilic and Gracyn Jewett and Carey M. Lisse and Carl Ingebretsen and M. Ryleigh Davis and Ian Wong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2507.11720},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

Submitted to RNAAS, 4 pages, 1 figure