NASA to Broadcast New Images of Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS on Nov. 19
NASA announced that it will release fresh imagery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS during a live webcast on Wednesday, November 19. The event will be streamed on the agency’s official website and affiliated platforms, allowing the public to watch the latest observations in real time. The images come from several of NASA’s space‑based observatories that have been tracking the comet since its discovery earlier this year.
3I/ATLAS is only the third known object of interstellar origin to enter the Solar System, following the detections of 1I/'Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. Its hyperbolic trajectory and high speed confirm that it originated outside the Sun’s gravitational influence. Scientists are using the comet’s passage to study the composition of material from other planetary systems, which could shed light on the formation processes of distant stars and planets.
During the webcast, NASA will present a sequence of high‑resolution photos and infrared data gathered by missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and the Infrared Telescope Facility. Agency officials explained that the combined data set provides a more complete picture of the comet’s nucleus, tail structure, and outgassing behavior than any single instrument could achieve.
Experts anticipate that the observations will help refine models of how interstellar objects interact with the Solar System’s environment. While the comet will continue on a trajectory that will carry it out of the inner Solar System within months, the data collected now will be archived for ongoing analysis. NASA encourages educators, students, and astronomy enthusiasts to join the live broadcast and follow up with publicly available data releases later this year.
