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The ESA\/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured a glimpse of interstellar\u00a0comet 3I\/ATLAS\u00a0on 15\u201326 October 2026. During this time period, the spacecraft\u2019s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) instrument suite spotted the comet crossing its field of view from approximately 358 million km away, or more than twice Earth\u2019s distance from the Sun.<\/p>\n
Comet 3I\/ATLAS was expected to be too faint for SOHO to see, but detailed image processing and overlaying (or ‘stacking’) subsequent telescope images ultimately generated this image, where the comet appears as a slight brightening in the centre.<\/p>\n
Launched in 1995, SOHO has become the most prolific comet hunter of all time. With the help of citizen scientists participating in the NASA-funded\u00a0Sungrazer Project, SOHO\u2019s imagery has led to the discovery of more than half of all known comets (over 5186 as of this writing).<\/p>\n
Full text from NASA<\/p>\n
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[Image description: Dark background with a bright yellow-white blob in the centre, covering perhaps a tenth of the width and a tenth of the height of the image. The rest of the image is slightly mottled brown.]<\/i><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n