Interstellar visitors like comet 3I/ATLAS are the most common objects in the Milky Way: 'There's almost always one within the solar system'

A glowing green light is seen in the center of a starry image from space but also in a white cutout box on the left part of the image.

Objects such as 'Oumuamua, Borisov and recently 3I/ATLAS have opened our eyes to the reality that outsiders regularly visit our solar system — and we're about to start spotting a whole lot more of them.

3I/ATLAS, an interstellar object currently zipping through the solar system, is capturing the attention of astronomers, the public and even most of our deep space assets. Its hyperbolic orbit tells us that it is not gravitationally bound to the sun and is just passing through.