When an interstellar object cruises through our solar system, scientists naturally scrutinise its nature. But for one of these visitors, the unusual comet 3I/ATLAS, Harvard physicist Avi Loeb has crunched the numbers, arriving at a seemingly impossible conclusion: the likelihood of its shape being purely natural is astronomically small.
Recently, a magnificent, wide-field picture of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS was shared on the British Astronomical Association (BAA) website, captured by Frank Niebling and Michael Buchner. The image, which stacks a sequence of five three-minute exposures, was taken using two telescopes (TEC 140/f5 and ASI 6200MM) between 5:08 and 5:22 UT on 9 November 2025.
