NASA’s Space Telescope has revealed that the coma of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS contains dust, water, organic molecules, and carbon dioxide, which emit infrared radiation.
The comet brightened significantly in December 2025, when the SPHEREx telescope conducted observations, about two months after it last passed the Sun at its closest possible distance.
The data collected by SPHEREx are giving scientists a deeper understanding of what this interstellar object is made of and how its pristine ices respond to the Sun’s heating as it passes through the solar system.
The data is processed and archived at the IPAC Center at the California Institute of Technology and is freely available to both scientists and the public.
