What are they, you would be wondering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I told you that C\/2025 N1 is the designation of the third interstellar comet ever detected by humans, you would know it has the other widely known name 3I\/ATLAS. Its orbit is hyperbolic, meaning that it\u2019s moving too fast to be gravitationally bound to the Sun and that the trajectory traces back beyond the solar system. It passed inside the orbit of Mars on its path through the inner solar system, and its closest approach to Earth will be around December 19, 2025 \u2014 about 170 million miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because it didn\u2019t form around our Sun, its composition, structure, and behavior offer a window into how comets, and perhaps planetary systems, elsewhere in the galaxy evolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The less-known C\/2025 K1 is a more modest comet \u2014 a native of our own solar system\u2019s distant Oort Cloud. Astronomers around the world watched in real time as it dramatically broke up into 3 or 4 pieces after its close approach to the Sun between November 11 and 13, 2025 after surviving perihelion, its closest encounter with the sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s hard not to feel a sense of cosmic humility when you think about it. In a single year, we\u2019ve witnessed two remarkable cosmic events: one object, voyaging across the galaxy, unbound to the Sun\u2019s gravity; another, a quiet resident of our solar system finally succumbing to solar forces after a lonely journey from the Oort Cloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It makes me wonder \u2014 out there, beyond our telescopes, how many more icy rocks from distant stars are drifting, awaiting their turn to pay a visit to our neighborhood? \u2604<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What are they, you would be wondering. If I told you that C\/2025 N1 is the designation of the third interstellar comet ever detected by humans, you would know it has the other widely known name 3I\/ATLAS. Its orbit is hyperbolic, meaning that it\u2019s moving too fast to be gravitationally bound to the Sun and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":111,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/galaxyexplorer.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}