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@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz
2025-12-12 19:39:05

Finally an RGB image of comet #3IATLAS from images taken by #GeminiNorth during the 26 November #shadowTheScientists session: noirlab.edu/public/news/noirla - the coma has become bluer due to more gas emission. Also published today: an X-ray image by XMM-Newton at esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/ with explanations in cbat.eps.harvard.edu/iau/cbet/ which also contains more 3I news.
Meanwhile the paper iopscience.iop.org/article/10. claims an upper limit for 3I's nucleus diameter of only some 750 meters from the measured non-gravitational acceleration (NGA) parameters: that would be waaay more stringent than the 5.6 km upper limit from early Hubble observations reported in iopscience.iop.org/article/10. (where also a lower limit of 440 meters is stated).

@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz
2025-11-26 14:31:54

The #GeminiNorth telescopes is observing the interstellar comet #3IATLAS right now: here is the acquisition image from moments ago, spectra to be taken now - from the #ShadowTheScientists session.

@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz
2025-11-26 14:43:52

What a #GeminiNorth #3IATLAS spectrum looks like - as raw as it gets, from the #shadowTheScientists session. See astronomerstelegram.org/?read= for a pre-perihelion spectrum.

@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz
2025-11-26 15:04:26

And here is what comet #3IATLAS looks like for the #geminiNorth Integral Field Unit (IFU) taking numerous spectra from points across the coma - from #ShadowTheScientists

@cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz
2025-11-27 00:43:05

And here is a recording of the #ShadowTheScientists live observation of interstellar comet #3IATLAS with #GeminiNorth a few hours ago: youtube.com/watch?v=cW0chiPZyYM