New 3I/ATLAS Images From Three Countries Revealed

New images of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS released on November 5th by multiple observatories are challenging scientific expectations. The R. Naves Observatory in Spain, the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, and China’s Tianwen-1 Mars Orbiter all captured photographs showing a compact, fuzzy ball of light with no visible cometary tail. This contradicts what astronomers predicted would happen after the object’s closest approach to the sun.

When 3I/ATLAS passed perihelion on October 29th, it came within 203 million kilometers of the sun, absorbing 770 watts of solar radiation per square meter. According to standard comet behavior, this intense heating should have triggered massive outgassing, with ice vaporizing to create a spectacular tail pushed away from the sun by solar wind and radiation pressure. Dr. Avi Loeb explained in his recent NBC interview that there should have been a very massive cloud of gas and dust around it based on what scientists know about comets, noting that other solar system comets like Lemon display beautiful tails away from the sun. Yet 3I/ATLAS appears remarkably similar to its July appearance, months before perihelion when it was much farther from the sun.

The mystery only gets more interesting with new data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory covering October 31st through November 4th, which detected non-gravitational acceleration. This means something is pushing the object beyond the sun’s gravitational influence. According to Dr. Loeb’s calculations, for a comet to accelerate naturally in this manner, it would need to lose at least 13 percent of its total mass, possibly as much as 20 percent. When a comet loses that much material quickly, scientists expect obvious signs including a giant cloud of gas and dust, a long bright tail, and detectable spectroscopic signatures of various gases. None of these are present in the new observations.

New 3I/ATLAS Images Released November 5th 2025

Dr. Loeb offered one natural explanation suggesting that ice fragments might be vaporizing so quickly by sunlight that they don’t have a chance to form a visible plume. However, he acknowledged uncertainty about what is actually occurring. The object continues to display unusual characteristics documented in Dr. Loeb’s research, including a trajectory aligned within five degrees of the ecliptic plane with only a 0.2 percent probability of occurring randomly, a mass one million times greater than Oumuamua while moving faster, and a chemical composition with far more nickel than iron, similar to manufactured metal alloys.

Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna tweeted on November 5th that NASA will release high-resolution images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera once the government shutdown ends. These images, captured when 3I/ATLAS passed within 29 million kilometers of Mars on October 3rd, achieved a spatial resolution of approximately 30 kilometers per pixel. China has already released lower-resolution images from their Tianwen-1 orbiter. The critical period will come on December 19th when 3I/ATLAS makes its closest approach to Earth. 

Sources

FOX 10 Phoenix. (2025, November 6). MYSTERY DEEPENS: New images of interstellar 3I/Atlas show ‘no tail’ | FOX 10 Talks | FOX 10 Phoenix [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KrisPhngrw

LiveNOW from FOX. (2025, November 6). Rep. Luna urges NASA to share unreleased 3I/ATLAS comet photos [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX_Dz6zb_Z4

Loeb, A. (2025a). No clear cometary tail in Post-Perihelion images of 3I/ATLAS. In Medium. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/no-clear-cometary-tail-in-post-perihelion-images-of-3i-atlas-e3904b352a7a

Loeb, A. (2025b). Post Perihelion Data on 3I/ATLAS. In Medium. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/post-perihelion-data-on-3i-atlas-3d1e72be2bb4

Loeb, A. (2025c). Fuzzy images of 3I/ATLAS at closest approach to Mars from the High-Resolution Imaging Camera. . . In Medium. https://medium.com/@avi-loeb/fuzzy-images-of-3i-atlas-at-closest-approach-to-mars-from-the-high-resolution-imaging-camera-4fa844000e5e

Luna, A. P. [RepLuna]. (2025, November 5). [Tweet]. X. https://x.com/RepLuna/status/1986156157732347964

NBC News. (2025, November 6). New images show 3I/ATLAS does not have a tail [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4vUxUbU1oc