[RIA] The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, often referred to as an "alien spaceship," continues to exhibit a rare dust antitail, according to the official Telegram channel of the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IKI RAS).
"As 3I/ATLAS moves away from the Sun, as expected, increasingly high-quality photographs of the object are beginning to arrive, revealing some previously hidden (or missing) details. The most remarkable of these, of course, is the antitail, oriented opposite to the main normal tail," the publication states.
The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS will approach Jupiter on March 16, 2026.
Scientists noted that antitails are common in ordinary comets, and there's a scientific explanation for this: a thin dust trail becomes clearly visible when Earth passes through the comet's orbital plane. However, in the case of 3I/ATLAS, this argument doesn't apply, as Earth hasn't yet crossed its orbital plane, and the antitail is visible for longer than a day or two. The IKI team suggested that this feature had been present since the interstellar object's discovery, even before its passage behind the Sun.
Thus, experts emphasized, there are plenty of natural examples of such phenomena, but in the case of 3I/ATLAS, the question of the antitail's future behavior remains open. Astronomers are also interested in whether this characteristic of the "alien ship" will change after it crosses the plane of Earth's orbit.
The interstellar object 3I/ATLAS was discovered on July 1. Scientists later determined it was a comet from another solar system. Its coma is approximately 24 kilometers in diameter. A computer model estimated its age at over 7.5 billion years—three billion years older than the Sun. It may be the oldest comet ever observed.
In August, Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb reported that 3I/ATLAS was emitting its own light, similar to the glow of car headlights, but the source of the glow was unknown. He suggested that 3I/ATLAS could be an artificial object with a powerful energy source capable of generating light visible for millions of kilometers. A month later, the scientist noted that 3I/ATLAS had undergone an "anomalous evolution," beginning to change color.
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