July 2 NASA revealed the existence of 3i / Atlas, only the third interstellar object ever observed in the universe. These are objects that exist in the interstellar space – the areas between the stars – and which are not linked to the gravitation to any star. The other two interstellar objects discovered to date are the comets 1i / Ê»oumuamua and 2i / Borisov.
3i / Atlas was discovered on July 1, when its existence was reported by a telescope in Rio Hurtado in Chile, operated by the Ast̩roid Earth impact alert system. Common commonly as Atlas, this is a system funded by NASA developed and exploited by the University of Hawaii to detect asteroids that could potentially hit the earth. He uses four telescopes Рtwo in Hawaii, one in Chile and one in South Africa Рto automatically scan the whole sky several times a night to monitor celestial movements.
The archived data collected in previous weeks by the other Atlas telescopes, as well as by the installation of Zwicky Sky at the Palomar Observatory, operated by the California Institute of Technology, confirmed the discovery. Additional 3i / Atlas observations were then made by many telescopes around the world, gradually revealing more details on this subject.
3i / Atlas is estimated at most, at most, about 20 kilometers. It is currently located about 670 million kilometers from the sun and approaches our star from the Sagittarius management at a speed of around 61 km per second. Its speed should increase as the sun approaches.
When astronomers studied its orbit, they found that 3i / Atlas moved too quickly to be linked by the gravity of the sun and will therefore go directly through the solar system and in interstellar space, to never be revised again.
