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At the center of the image is a comet that appears as a teardrop-shaped bluish cocoon of dust coming off the comet’s solid, icy nucleus and seen against a black background. The comet appears to be heading to the bottom left corner of the image. About a dozen short, light blue diagonal streaks are seen scattered across the image, which are from background stars that appeared to move during the exposure because the telescope was tracking the moving comet.

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Hubble photographed the comet on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Because Hubble was tracking the comet moving along a hyperbolic trajectory, the stationary background stars are streaked in the exposure.

About the Object

  • At the time of observation, comet 3I/ATLAS was located at a distance of 3.8 au from the Sun

About the Data

  • The Hubble observations include those from program 17830 (D. Jewitt)

  • Comet 3I/ATLAS

  • Interstellar comet

  • Release Date

    August 7, 2025

  • Science Release

    As NASA Missions Study Interstellar Comet, Hubble Makes Size Estimate

  • Credit

    Image: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

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At the center of the image is a comet that appears as a teardrop-shaped bluish cocoon of dust coming off the comet’s solid, icy nucleus and seen against a black background. The comet appears to be heading to the bottom left corner of the image. About a dozen short, light blue diagonal streaks are seen scattered across the image, which are from background stars that appeared to move during the exposure because the telescope was tracking the moving comet.

These images were acquired by the WFC3 Instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. The color results from assigning a hue (color) to a monochromatic (grayscale) image. In this case, the assigned color is: Blue: F350LP

Related Images & Videos

Comet 3I/ATLAS Compass Image

This image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera on July 21, 2025. The scale bar is labeled in arcseconds, which is a measure of angular distance on the sky. One arcsecond is equal an angular measurement of 1/3600 of o...

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