Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

This is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Hubble photographed the comet on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Because Hubble was tracking the comet moving along a hyperbolic trajectory, the stationary background stars are streaked in the exposure.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/as-nasa-missions-study-interstellar-comet-hubble-makes-size-estimate/

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://stsci.edu/copyright/