While the holiday season usually draws our eyes toward festive lights on the ground, a rare celestial wanderer was making its final bow across the Pacific Northwest sky. A mysterious visitor from the furthest reaches of the cosmos, known as 3I/ATLAS, has spent the last few months trekking through our solar system, offering astronomers a fleeting glimpse of a world beyond our own.
This isn't your garden-variety comet. It holds the prestigious, albeit rare, title of being only the third extra-solar object ever detected by humanity, following the 2017 discovery of the asteroid-like 1I/'Oumuamua and the 2019 detection of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov.
