In the vast, silent theatre of space, a rare drama is unfolding. On one side, a mysterious visitor from beyond our solar system, an object named 3I/ATLAS. On the other, a violent, billion-tonne explosion from our own Sun, a coronal mass ejection. Astronomers realised with palpable excitement that these two celestial phenomena were on a direct collision course.
Interstellar objects straying into our neighbourhood are incredibly rare; in fact, 3I/ATLAS—first discovered on 1 July 2025, by the ATLAS survey in Chile—is just the third ever observed. While coronal mass ejections are more common, they certainly do not happen every day.
