This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batsler. Behind the Black.

Fifteen years of Bob Zimmerman, your subscriptions and donations. Keep Bob reporting on not only space engineering, but discoveries.

And this makes me smile.

Three-I-A-T-L-A- a s it is interstellar what is it bob yes three

i atlas is three i stands for the third interstellar object that's been identified uh three i

atlas and atlas is the one of the telescope that first detected it.

It is moving super fast as it cuts through the solar system,

so they're pretty sure, based on its speed and path,

that it came from outside the solar system. It's not an object from the Earth Cloud.

It was moving too quickly, and it will come out of the solar system too quickly.

The Gemini, North Gemini telescope in Hawaii, has obtained the first really good image,

a good image, let's say, of a three-eye atlas. And I've got it up on behind the black,

along with a map showing how it's going to travel to the solar system. And basically,

this image, this first image tells us it's about 12 miles across.

It has a nucleus and a coma like a comet.

And so this is probably a snowball, dirty snowball, I see with lots of rocks mixed in,

and that as it's moving in towards the sun, it's heating up,

and so the ice begins

to sublimate a way to produce the coma and tail.

It's likely not going to ever get so bright that it will be visible to the naked eye

as it zips past Mars, and it's out of the solar system.

But you can guarantee over the next few weeks, John, there's going to be a lot more

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