Latest data from 3I/Atlas

No new studies have been published by NASA on comet 3I/Atlas due to the closure of the United States government. At the moment we have to trust what the observatories that do not depend on NASA or those that operate automatically, which are few, are capturing, and be careful because the flow of information and, above all, its analysis is not instantaneous.

So throughout this week there will surely be more data, more analysis and more speculation about what happened during the perihelion. At the moment three new anomalies have been detected, although I bring you details of two of them, the first during this approach to the sun, that is, before the perihelion, 3I/Atlas experienced an unexpected and rapid brightness that exceeded expectations for comets in the Oort cloud.

The first peak of brightness was on September 15, then it had others, on October 1, October 3 and October 20, scientists propose the cause as the high speed of approach of 3I/Atlas, remember that of the three interstellar objects it is the fastest and interstellar objects go much faster than comets in the solar system and asteroids.

And as another or complementary explanation to the issue of speed, there would also be the strange chemistry of this interstellar object that would be the cause of these curious flashes of brightness, but it is a topic of debate and the strange chemistry thing is already coming up many times to try to justify the anomalies, logically it has a strange chemistry, it is an interstellar object, it comes from outside the solar system and is even older than the Sun itself, so its chemical composition is very different. There are two explanations, but I don't want to say that they are the definitive ones.

In addition, it remains to be known if this increase in brightness is maintained after perihelion; it was calculated that, if it was due to an outburst or an eruption, a jet of material within 3I/Atlas, because comets also have these types of burst and eruption events, in fact, comets can break up and even disintegrate. If 3I/Atlas had an outburst, it could mean a mass loss of up to 10% of 3I/Atlas and that material should form a very detectable gas plume in the coming weeks.

Second anomaly and it is evidence of a non-gravitational acceleration of 3I/Atlas and it occurred near its perihelion on October 30, this deviation from the purely gravitational trajectory is considered anomalous because it is completely explained by known forces, in this case by the gravitational attraction that the sun would exert on 3I/Atlas. Scientists propose natural explanations such as the ejection of gas due to ice sublimation, that is, a jet of gas can alter the speed of a comet, because this also occurs in comets. However, in the case of Tres Atlas, the acceleration is very low, so it does not imply a change in trajectory.

It would be a deviation, they have calculated, of about 60,000 km in one month, these are preliminary data and I repeat, there is still a lot of data to be received and analyzed, the perihelion occurred only 4 days ago and three and Atlas is still within the solar brightness and is not observable by optical terrestrial telescopes. They say that starting today and tomorrow it could begin to be hunted, but under special circumstances and with powerful equipment.

By mid-November things will be much clearer and 3I/Atlas in principle would be of magnitude 12 to 14, this means that it would not be visible to the naked eye, but it can be captured by amateur astronomers with a telescope of about 200 mm.

The closest approach of 3I/Atlas to the Earth will be December 19 and it is maintained that it will be about 269 million kilometers, a million above or a million below, because in this there can always be a margin of error, even so, it will be a hyper safe distance, 269 million km.

Astronomy fans could try to hunt it at that time, since the constellation of Virgo would be found and it could be seen at dawn visually close to Venus and I hope they publish their photos.

And the third anomaly is that it has changed color, it has gone from having greenish shine to having bluish shine and that means a change, either in temperature or chemistry.

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