NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has gotten an up-close look at a headline-grabbing object known as 3I/ATLAS that has recently wandered into Earth's cosmic neighborhood from far away.
The image, which NASA bills as "the sharpest-ever picture" of an object most astronomers agree is almost definitely a comet, depicts the interstellar visitor that originated from outside our solar system from elsewhere in the Milky Way.
3I/ATLAS first made news in early July when scientists confirmed it as the third-ever observed interstellar interloper in our solar system. The space object further attracted the public's fascination again later in the month when a controversial astrophysicist from Harvard University began claiming it could be an alien spaceship.
What we definitely know about 3I/ATLAS is that it has been drifting through interstellar space for billions of years, gaining speed from the gravitational slingshot effect of passing countless stars and nebulas.
Fortunately, Hubble is just the first in NASA's fleet of telescopes slated to observe the likely comet as scientists look to learn more about the object's size of physical properties.
