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The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object to be discovered. Pre-perihelion measurements provide a unique opportunity to study its activity and composition, which may alter as it is heated in the coming months. We…

The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS shows a weak cometary activity. Its brightness suggests a maximum radius of ~10km (A/0.05)^{-1/2} for an asteroid with an albedo A. I show that interstellar objects with that radius would amount to an…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-08-06 Abraham Loeb

We describe the physical characteristics of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, discovered on 2025 July 1 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System. The comet has eccentricity, $e$ $\simeq$ 6.08 and velocity at infinity, v$_{\infty}$…

We report a survey of molecular emission from cometary volatiles using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) toward interstellar object 3I/ATLAS carried out on UT 2025 December 22 and 23 at a heliocentric distance ($r_H$) of $2.37-2.41$ au.…

A previous study suggests that the observed exponential character of the surface brightness profiles in the coma around the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS at 4 au can be explained as a consequence of the destruction of the icy scattering…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-05-08 Eric Keto , Abraham Loeb

On July 1st 2025 the third interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS or C/2025 N1 (ATLAS), was discovered, with an eccentricity of $e=6.15 \pm 0.01$ and perihelion of $q=1.357\pm0.001$ au. We report our initial visible to near-infrared (420-1000 nm)…

We present the first polarimetric observations of the third discovered interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1), obtained pre-perihelion with FORS2/VLT, ALFOSC/NOT, and FoReRo2/RCC, over a phase angle range of 7.7-22.4{\deg}. This marks…

Interstellar Objects are comets and asteroids that formed around other stars but were ejected before they could accrete into exoplanets. They therefore represent a rare opportunity to compare the building blocks of planets in the Solar…

3I/ATLAS is the third macroscopic interstellar object detected traversing the Solar System. Since its initial discovery on UT 01 July 2025, hundreds of hours on a range of observational facilities have been dedicated to measure the physical…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-08-27 Adina D. Feinstein , John W. Noonan , Darryl Z. Seligman

We report the detection of the nucleus of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, using a nucleus extraction technique on Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations taken between December 2025 and January 2026. The product of the V-band geometric…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-02-16 Man-To Hui , David Jewitt , Max J. Mutchler , Jessica Agarwal , Yoonyoung Kim

3I/ATLAS was discovered on UT 2025 July 1 and joins a limited but growing population of detected $\sim10^2-10^3$ m scale interstellar objects. In this paper we report photometric observations of 3I/ATLAS from the nights of UT 2025 July 3,…

3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object discovered to date, following 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. Its unusually high excess velocity and active cometary nature make it a key probe of the Galactic population of icy planetesimals.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-28 X. Pérez-Couto , S. Torres , E. Villaver , A. J. Mustill , M. Manteiga

The discovery of the third interstellar object (ISO), 3I/ATLAS (`3I'), provides a rare chance to directly observe a small body from another Solar System. Studying its chemistry and dynamics will add to our understanding of how the processes…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-09-03 Matthew J. Hopkins , Rosemary C. Dorsey , John C. Forbes , Michele T. Bannister , Chris J. Lintott , Brayden Leicester

The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS displayed a small but statistically significant non-gravitational acceleration during its passage through the inner Solar System. Using a thermophysical model coupled with stochastic sampling of jet…

General Physics · Physics 2025-12-30 Florian Neukart

Context. Theories of the formation and evolution of small bodies in planetary systems predict that they may escape into interstellar space at any time. After having characterized just two such interlopers -1I/2017 U1 (Oumuamua) and…

Interstellar objects are the ejected building blocks of other solar systems. As such, they enable the acquisition of otherwise inaccessible information about nascent extrasolar systems. The discovery of the third interstellar object,…

We aim to characterize the physical and activity properties of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS through spectroscopic and photometric observations during the first month after its discovery. We performed time-series photometry and long-slit…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-10-01 T. Santana-Ros , O. Ivanova , S. Mykhailova , N. Erasmus , K. Kamiński , D. Oszkiewicz , T. Kwiatkowski , M. Husárik , T. S. Ngwane , A. Penttilä

Interstellar objects (ISOs) provide unique insights into the building blocks and conditions of extrasolar planetary systems. The newly discovered object, 3I/ATLAS (C/2025 N1), represents the third known ISO after 1I/'Oumuamua and…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-08-08 Thomas H. Puzia , Rohan Rahatgaonkar , Juan Pablo Carvajal , Prasanta K. Nayak , Baltasar Luco

Cometary activity from interstellar objects provides a unique window into the environs of other stellar systems. We report blue-sensitive integral field unit spectroscopy of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS from the Keck-II-mounted Keck…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-12-16 W. B. Hoogendam , B. J. Shappee , J. J. Wray , B. Yang , K. J. Meech , C. Ashall , D. D. Desai , K. Hart , J. T. Hinkle , A. Hoffman , E. M. Hu , D. O. Jones , K. Medler , C. Pfeffer
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