Dear MEL Topic Readers,
Astronomers spot an interstellar object zipping through our solar
system
Planetary astronomers are so excited to learn about an incoming interstellar
object. It was first found earlier this month and was named 3I/ATLAS. The comet
is thought to have come from the Milky Way’s galactic center and is traveling
at 60 kilometers per second, or over 214,000 kilometers per hour, about twice
as fast as the Earth’s orbital speed around the Sun. Unlike the planets of our
solar system, the comet’s path through the solar system is almost a straight
line. It is thought that it originated from another solar system and has been
traveling through interstellar space for millions of years. This is the third
of such interstellar objects identified; the first was in 2017, and the second
was in 2019. It will come as close as 270 million kilometers from our planet on
December 19, but that is still much farther than the 150-million-kilometer
distance from the Earth to the Sun. Astronomers around the world are getting
more excited about observing the comet as it comes closer to the center of our
solar system in the next several months. What will we learn from an interstellar
comet?
Read the article and learn about an object that has been traveling from
another solar system.
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