ByJamie Carter,
Senior Contributor.
Update, Jan. 18, 2026: poor weather postponed the livestream to Thursday, Jan. 22. See below for details.
Did you see Comet 3I/ATLAS? After lighting up the imaginations of many last year — not least when it was the focus of conspiracy theories about it being an alien spacecraft — the interstellar space-rock is now barreling away from the sun and, ultimately, out of the solar system. However, before it does, there will be one more chance for skywatchers to get a close-up of the icy visitor.
Initially called A11pl3Z when it was discovered on July 1, 2025, by the Deep Random Survey remote telescope in Chile, part of the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (that’s where “ATLAS” comes in) survey in Río Hurtado, Chile, it was quickly renamed C/2025 N1 ATLAS when it was seen to be a comet. However, its peculiar motion led astronomers to figure that it had a highly hyperbolic orbit — it was not gravitationally bound to the sun. That means it must be from another star system and merely passing through the solar system. It was renamed 3I/ATLAS and became the third interstellar object ever observed after 1I/Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019.
