Latest images of alien comet 3I/ATLAS reveal stunning tail, views from space
Telescopes on Earth, along with multiple cameras in space, have captured a whole gallery of new imagery of this alien visitor to our solar system.
This week, astronomers here on Earth, as well as a collection of NASA spacecraft, are treating us to amazing new views of alien comet 3I/ATLAS.
The latest interstellar visitor to swing through our solar system continues to make headlines. Internet rumors have been swirling, talking about activity that can only be explained by alien technology. Meanwhile, astronomers have picked up their observations, after the comet emerged from behind the Sun, and space fans have waited anxiously for NASA to release their new views, captured by spacecraft located at Mars and scattered throughout the inner solar system.
3I/ATLAS as imaged from a robotic telescope unit operated by the Virtual Telescope Project, in Manciano, Italy. The comet's bright head is shown, lower left, with a long, wispy tail extending to the upper right, and a short, dim anti-tail visible pointing to the lower left. The background stars are blurred due to the motion of the comet in the foreground, and a few dim satellite tracks are also visible. (Gianluca Masi, Virtual Telescope Project)
Above is a view of 3I/ATLAS captured by the Virtual Telescope Project, on November 19, 2025. The image shows off the comet's long tail — a structure that was not readily seen before the comet made its closest pass by the Sun. More images are available on their website.
Despite the rumors, this object continues to behave exactly like a comet — a simple ball of ice, dust, and rock, being heated by the light from our Sun. There are certainly some unusual aspects to it, including its water to CO2 ice ratio, the high nickel to iron ratio in its dust, and the extreme speed at which it is travelling through our solar system. However, these are, no doubt, due to the fact that it formed in some distant star system, and it has been travelling through interstellar space for what could be billions of years.
From all indications, it has all the hallmarks of a 'home-grown' comet: a coma of gas and dust surrounding the nucleus, and a long tail also composed of gas and dust, which is blown away from the nucleus by the solar wind and by radiation pressure from sunlight striking the grains of dust. It even possesses an anti-tail, pointing towards the Sun, resulting from sunlight warming that part of the comet's surface, causing jets to expel gas and dust into space backward along the comet's trajectory.
An annotated version of the above image, labelling the coma, tail, and anti-tail, as well as the satellite tracks that show up in the images. (Gianluca Masi, Virtual Telescope Project, annotations by Scott Sutherland)
The comet is still too close to the Sun for our best space telescopes — Hubble and JWST — to turn their gaze upon it again. Aiming either of those astronomical powerhouses in that direction, right now, would run the risk having sunlight burn out their instruments. We will need to wait, likely until sometime in December, before it is once again safe.
However, over the past few months, NASA spacecraft have been collecting a number of other images of 3I/ATLAS. On Wednesday, we finally got a look at what they've seen.
Watch below: NASA scientists present the newest views of 3I/ATLAS from spacecraft throughout the inner solar system
In September, two asteroid missions, Lucy and Psyche, both aimed their cameras at the comet.
Psyche is on its way to an asteroid of the same name, which is suspected of being the exposed core of some ancient protoplanet. It used its Multispectral Imager A camera to capture four images of 3I/ATLAS over the course of about 8 hours.
3I/ATLAS as it passed through the field of view of the Psyche Multispectral Imager A on Sep. 8-9, 2025. Inset, bottom left: the comet is shown in close-up, with a scale bar indicating 50 arcseconds or 13,000 km across. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU)
Lucy is a mission to explore several large Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun along the same path as Jupiter, both ahead of and behind the planet in its orbit. The spacecraft's L’LORRI camera captured a telescopic view of 3I/ATLAS from a distance of around 386 million km away.
*Lucy's L'LORRI view of 3I/ATLAS from Sep. 16, 2025. (
According to NASA, "The L'LORRI imager captured the comet's coma, the fuzzy halo of gas and dust surrounding 3I/ATLAS above, and its tail, a smudge of gas flowing to the right of the comet. This image spans about 11 arcminutes of sky, or roughly one-third the width of the full Moon. Solar system north is up."
Then, in early October, as 3I/ATLAS passed Mars, both the HiRISE instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Mastcam on the Perseverance Rover captured views from orbit and from the planet's surface. Along with the images snapped by the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, these are the closest views of the comet so far.
The view of 3I/ATLAS from MRO's HiRISE instrument (left), and two frames taken by the Mastcam on Perseverance. While the comet is captured quite well from orbit by MRO, it only appears very dimly to Perseverance's cameras, likely due to dust in the atmosphere. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona, NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)
Given that HiRISE was designed to capture high resolution images of the Martian surface from about 200-400 kilometres up, and Perseverance's Mastcam was built to record images and video of the rover's local environment in Jezero Crater, both did remarkably well at spotting and imaging a comet located around 30 million km away.
Missions that observe the Sun were also very helpful in tracking the progress of the comet. During 3I/ATLAS' closest pass by the Sun, when it would likely be at its most active, it was not visible from Earth, due to the brightness of our star.
Views of 3I/ATLAS taken by SOHO from Oct. 15-26 (top left), STEREO-A from Sept. 11-25 (stop right), and PUNCH from Sept. 20-Oct. 3 (bottom), reveal similar features, with a fuzzy bob surrounded by gases and dust, with PUNCH picking up the comet's tail as well. (NASA/ESA/Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang, NASA/Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang, and NASA/Southwest Research Institute)
Spacecraft such as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO-A), and the new Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission, are all outfitted with cameras specially designed to filter out the harsh light from the Sun, to reveal the details of space around it. Each spacecraft captured images of 3I/ATLAS over several days, which were combined together to enhance the brightness of it, and provide us with the images shown above.
"NASA is in the midst of an unprecedented solar system-wide observation campaign, turning its spacecraft and space telescopes to follow comet 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object to pass through our solar system," the agency stated on their website. "Twelve NASA assets have captured and processed imagery of the comet since it was first discovered on July 1, and several others will have opportunities to capture more images as the comet continues to pass through our solar system."
3I/ATLAS in the constellation Virgo, at 5 a.m. local time on the morning of November 22, 2025. (Stellarium)
If you wish to find 3I/ATLAS for yourself, it is now in the constellation Virgo, located in southeastern sky each morning, during the predawn hours, from around 3 a.m. local time until sunrise. It is estimated at being around magnitude 10, which is still far too dim to spot with the unaided eye. However, a decent backyard telescope can pick up objects of that brightness, provided the observer has clear, dark skies, far from city light pollution. The comet will remain in Virgo for the rest of November, but will pass into the constellation Leo in December, while growing dimmer as it gets farther away from the Sun.
(Thumbnail image is Gianluca Masi's Virtual Telescope image of 3I/ATLAS from November 19, 2025, with the brightness adjusted to make the comet stand out better against the background.)