STEREO Observations Part of Effort to Understand Unusual Comet from Outside the Solar System
This image shows the 3I/ATLAS interstellar comet as a bright, fuzzy orb in the center. Traveling through our solar system at a staggering 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) per hour, 3I/ATLAS was made visible by using a series of colorized stacked images from Sept. 11-25, using the SECCHI/HI1 telescope, a visible-light imager on the STEREO-A spacecraft. The colorization was applied to differentiate the image from other observing spacecraft images.
NASA/Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang
STEREO-A observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS from Sept. 11 to Oct. 2. STEREO is part of a fleet of NASA spacecraft observing this comet, together providing more information about its size, physical properties, and chemical makeup.
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