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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA has discovered an interstellar comet that’s wandered into our backyard.
The abstraction bureau spotted the quick-moving entity with the sky-surveying Atlas scope successful Chile earlier this week, and confirmed it was a comet from different prima system. It's officially the 3rd known interstellar entity to walk done our star strategy and poses nary menace to Earth.
The newest visitant is 416 cardinal miles (670 cardinal kilometers) from the sun, retired adjacent Jupiter. NASA said the comet volition marque its closest attack to the prima successful October, scooting betwixt the orbits of Mars and Earth — but person to the reddish satellite than america astatine a harmless 150 cardinal miles (240 cardinal kilometers) away.
Astronomers astir the satellite are monitoring the comet — an icy snowball officially designated 3I/Atlas — to find its size and shape. It should beryllium disposable by telescopes done September, earlier it gets excessively adjacent to the sun, and reappear successful December connected the different broadside of the sun.
The archetypal interstellar visitant observed from Earth was Oumuamua, Hawaiian for scout, successful grant of the observatory successful Hawaii that discovered it successful 2017. Classified astatine archetypal arsenic an asteroid, the elongated Oumuamua has since showed signs of being a comet.
The 2nd entity confirmed to person strayed from different prima strategy into our ain —— 21/Borisov — was discovered successful 2019 by a Crimean amateur astronomer with that name. It, too, is believed to beryllium a comet.
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