By Anna Young
It鈥檚 a stellar discovery.
A Manhattan-sized interstellar comet was spotted blazing through our solar system 鈥 marking only the third time a mysterious object from beyond our cosmic neighborhood has been observed.
The fast-moving comet 鈥 named 3I/ATLAS 鈥 was first discovered Tuesday by NASA鈥檚 ATLAS telescope in Chile, sparking a race among astronomers to gather data as they traced its path back to June 14, the space agency announced Wednesday.
鈥淭hese things take millions of years to go from one stellar neighborhood to another, so this thing has likely been traveling through space for hundreds of millions of years, even billions of years,鈥 Paul Chodas, director of NASA鈥檚 Center for Near Earth Object Studies, said Thursday.
鈥淲e don鈥檛 know, and so we can鈥檛 predict which star it came from.鈥
The icy celestial visitor, believed to have come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, is expected to pass 150 million miles away from Earth in October and poses no threat, NASA said.
It is currently 416 million miles from the sun, near Jupiter, and hurtling through space at a scorching 37 miles per second, with early reports showing the comet sporting a glowing tail and surrounding cloud of gas and dust around its nucleus.
Its origin remains unknown.
鈥淲e鈥檝e been expecting to see interstellar objects for decades, frankly, and finally we鈥檙e seeing them,鈥 Chodas added, noting its size appears to span about 12 miles across 鈥 making it larger than the first two known spacefaring drifters.
鈥淎 visitor from another solar system, even though it鈥檚 natural 鈥 it鈥檚 not artificial, don鈥檛 get excited because some people do 鈥 It鈥檚 just very exciting.鈥
The first interstellar object identified from Earth was Oumuamua, named after the Hawaiian observatory that found it in 2017. The second, known as 21/Borisov, was detected in 2019.
The latest cosmic nomad will remain visible by telescope through September before it nears the sun.
It is expected to reappear on the other side of the sun in early December.
With Post wires