This is John Batchel, a conversation with my colleague Bob Zimmerman, 3-I-A-T-L-A-S-A-S-A-S-A-A-S-A-E.

Interstellar object moving very fast, 12 miles across or more, coming from another solar system.

This is the third one in Easy Mamaray.

We're not yet ready to intercept it, Bob says, but we can put all the telescopes. Everything is pointing towards it. What's it made of? Is it just like our solar system, or are we different, or is it different? Is Bob Zimmerman to explain? Much more of this tonight. 3-I-T-L-A-S, Atlas.

Yes, 3i Atlas is, 3i stands for the third interstellar object that's been identified.

3i Atlas, and Atlas is a 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 art 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 as it's moving in towards the sun, it's heating up, and so the

ice begins to sublimate away 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.