“Alien spacecraft“ 3I/ATLAS suddenly dims while approaching Earth
Tengrinews.kz – The brightness of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS, which is being called an “alien spacecraft,” has decreased by more than one-third over the past few days. Scientists believe the main reason is the comet’s increasing distance from the Sun, although internal changes in its structure are also possible.
This was reported yesterday by the Solar Astronomy Laboratory of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences on its Telegram channel.
“The brightness of 3I/ATLAS as seen from Earth has decreased quite noticeably—by more than one-third over the past few days, despite the fact that the object continues rapidly approaching the planet,” the publication said.
It is explained that the object’s stellar magnitude—its main brightness characteristic—was 10.1 at the beginning of the week, and has now increased to 10.6. This means the object’s brightness is currently about 63 percent of what it was six days ago.
Since the distance between the object and Earth has decreased by 10 million kilometers during this period, the main cause of the fading is likely the comet’s continued movement away from the Sun, scientists believe.
Because the object, classified as a comet, should shine with reflected sunlight, its brightness would naturally decrease as it moves farther from the Sun. At least, this explanation seems perfectly reasonable.
“However, it is not excluded that internal factors may also be contributing to the fading—such as unobserved changes in the characteristics of the nucleus that affect its albedo,” the scientists noted.
Despite the decrease in brightness, 3I/ATLAS still ranks fourth in brightness among nearly 100 comets currently present in Earth’s sky and available for observation.
The current brightness level keeps the object observable not only with scientific instruments but also with semi-professional equipment. Incoming images show a very unusual “ragged” structure and dynamic tail behavior at this stage.