New Hubble Images Show 3I/ATLAS Has Two Jets Not One

New Hubble Space Telescope images from December 12th and December 27th are revealing something scientists did not expect. 3I/ATLAS is now displaying two distinct jets shooting out from its nucleus, and they are wobbling and shifting in ways that are raising serious questions about this mysterious visitor.

3I/ATLAS made its closest approach to Earth on December 19th, coming within 270 million kilometers of our planet. It did not perform any unusual maneuvers and basically ignored Earth. It is now racing away from the Sun at over 144,000 miles per hour, heading directly toward Jupiter.

According to geophysicist Stefan Burns, who appeared on the Randall Carlson show, the key thing that has changed our understanding is just how fast this object is moving. Burns stated that 3I/ATLAS could be the fastest object ever observed and measured, coming in at 58 kilometers per second and reaching 68 kilometers per second at perihelion. This extreme speed means it experienced only a slight deviation of about 16 degrees when passing the Sun, essentially behaving like a bullet firing through our solar system.

The carbon dioxide coma surrounding the object expanded to roughly 700,000 kilometers across, about the distance from Earth to the Moon and approximately half the diameter of the Sun itself. Loeb has been tracking the anti-tail since July 21st when Hubble captured its first image. That jet is 10 times longer than it is wide and extends over one million kilometers, which is two and a half times the distance from Earth to the Moon. What makes this unusual is that comet tails normally get pushed away from the Sun, but here we see the exact opposite, and it has persisted for months.

Images of 3I/ATLAS through 170 second exposures by the WFC3 UVIS (F350LP) camera of the Hubble Space Telescope, processed through the Larson-Sekanina rotation gradient filter, show a double jet structure. The left panel displays the data on December 12, 2025, and the right panel on December 27, 2025. The relative brightness of the two jets changes between these jets, either due to jet rotational wobble or source variability. The brightness is dominated by the anti-tail jet, directed at the Sun towards the lower left side. (Image credit: Toni Scarmato, based on data released by NASA/ESA/STScI here) - Description from Avi Loeb

Researchers found the anti-tail wobbles by about 8 degrees as the object spins. According to Loeb, the rotation axis points almost directly at the Sun to within 8 degrees, which he described as really surprising. He noted the chance of that alignment happening randomly is only about half a percent, and it means the object has a permanent dayside and a permanent nightside.

Back in late July, observers detected the brightness of 3I/ATLAS repeating every 16 hours with about 20 percent variation. Loeb compared this to a heartbeat, explaining that the object is basically pulsating in the material it sends into the surrounding gas cloud through the jet.

According to Burns, 3I/ATLAS was likely once a short period comet that got heavily thermally processed before being flung out of its original star system. During its long transit through interstellar space, perhaps billions of years, it accumulated a crust of interstellar material. Burns noted the evolution from red to green and the changing composition of its coma indicates it was heavily enhanced with these materials on its crust and has been volatilizing that out.

3I/ATLAS will arrive at Jupiter on March 16th, 2026, at exactly the distance called the Hill radius, where Jupiter’s gravity dominates over the Sun’s gravitational influence. This is also where Lagrange points exist, stable spots in space where gravity between two large objects balances out. We placed the James Webb Space Telescope at one of Earth’s Lagrange points for that same reason.

Most recently, methanol was detected at two orders of magnitude higher than hydrogen cyanide, which is a very unusual ratio. Methanol is a building block for prebiotic chemistry, material crucial for the origin of life on early Earth. Loeb is hoping for Webb telescope spectra of the jets in coming weeks. If the jet speed is below a few hundred meters per second, it could be due to sublimation of ice pockets. But technological thrusters can produce exhaust speeds of a few kilometers per second or even tens of kilometers per second.

Sources

3I/ATLAS is hiding behind a veil of dust. (2025, December 28). Medium. https://medium.com/@avi-loeb/3i-atlas-is-hiding-behind-a-veil-of-dust-39e2d76468a9

Dr Brian Keating. (2025, December 22). Avi Loeb: What is 3I/ATLAS? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJxX36IEVFA

The Randall Carlson. (2025, December 21). 3I/ATLAS Passes Earth: What We Know ft. Stefan Burns [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNuXoXIGnXw

Wobbling Jets of 3I/ATLAS Based on New Hubble Telescope Images from December 12 and 27, 2025. (2025, December 28). Medium. https://avi-loeb.medium.com/wobbling-jets-of-3i-atlas-based-on-new-hubble-telescope-images-from-december-12-and-27-2025-ce6f67592cbb