Comets & Interstellar Visitors: Exploring the Dynamic Universe (A Free, Virtual Lecture)
![This is a Hubble Space telescope image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Hubble photographed the comet on 21 July 21 2025, when the comet was 365 million kilometres from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Because Hubble was tracking the comet moving along a hyperbolic trajectory, the stationary background stars are streaked in the exposure. [Image description: At the center of the image is a comet that appears as a teardrop-shaped bluish cocoon of dust coming off the comet’s solid, icy nucleus and seen against a black background. The comet appears to be heading to the bottom left corner of the image. About a dozen short, light blue diagonal streaks are seen scattered across the image, which are from background stars that appeared to move during the exposure because the telescope was tracking the moving comet.]](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a3a95c3/2147483647/strip/true/crop/700x516+0+0/resize/508x374!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F55%2Fe2%2Fde183cbe46e1bdafb341b817e904%2F3iatlas-comet-hubble.jpg)
Comets & Interstellar Visitors: Exploring the Dynamic Universe (A Free, Virtual Lecture)
The photo is a Hubble Space Telescope image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. Hubble photographed the comet on 21 July 21 2025, when the comet was 365 million kilometers from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Because Hubble was tracking the comet moving along a hyperbolic trajectory, the stationary background stars are streaked in the exposure.
On January 22, 2026, at 7:00 PM, ET, Hamptons Observatory and co-host Suffolk County Community College will present a free, virtual lecture by Dr. Ariel Graykowski, a research scientist from the SETI Institute, who will talk about comets, interstellar visitors such as 3I/ATLAS and its unique features, as well as how professionals and citizen scientists are collaborating to explore the dynamic sky in an effort to learn more about our universe. Details and registration information may be found on https://HamptonsObservatory.org