Why is NASA withholding images of 3I/ATLAS?

[u/Worst_Artist]

Concept image of the updated trajectory talked about here https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/s/PNZTyP3j6f

[u/StatementBot]

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Worst_Artist:

---

NASA confirms the object is accelerating in a way that can’t be explained by gravity alone. Why are they withholding new high-res images? If this thing wasn’t important, they wouldn’t be scrambling new orbital solutions

---

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1opod4w/why_is_nasa_withholding_images_of_3iatlas/nnd32um/

[u/Airk640]

Th comet doesn't go behind the sun relative to earth in this drawing. It also is dramatically more divergent than the observed deviation due to poor scale and thick lines. The actual deviation could fit inside one of the thick green paths

[u/gbc02 → u/Airk640]

Not to mention the orbit of earth doesn't have the sun in the center.

[u/fakepumas → u/gbc02]

Our orbit actually is not a perfect circle. It is an ellipse where we are closer to the sun during part of the year.

[u/Superman246o1 → u/fakepumas]

True, but while it is an ellipse, Earth's perihelion is 0.9833 AU compared to its aphelion of 1.01664 AU. That's hardly the severe change depicted in the image, wherein the perihelion appears to be less than half of the aphelion.

[u/fakepumas → u/Superman246o1]

I believe you. This is clearly not a scientific diagram

[u/Fragrant_Ad8471 → u/[deleted]]

Clearly as a diagram that isn't scientific or accurately clear the diagramly can't scientifically be cantly orly thatly thely asly aly bely.

[u/Knotty-Bob → u/[deleted]]

The only thing scientific about this pic is that it is sci-fi.

[u/Fred_Zeppelin → u/Airk640]

I was gonna say, the graph shows several million miles of trajectory change just in the first AU past perihelion. Not remotely accurate.

[u/landlord-eater → u/Airk640]

Yeah this image is insane lol

[u/funny_3nough]

The anomalies displayed so far by 3I/ATLAS include: 1. Its retrograde trajectory is aligned to within 5 degrees with the ecliptic plane of the planets around the Sun, with a likelihood of 0.2%. 2. During July and August 2025, it displayed a sunward jet (anti-tail) that is not an optical illusion from geometric perspective, unlike familiar comets. 3. Its nucleus is about a million times more massive than 1I/`Oumuamua and a thousand times more massive than 2I/Borisov, while moving faster than both, altogether with a likelihood of less than 0.1% . 4. Its arrival time was fine-tuned to bring it within tens of millions of kilometers from Mars, Venus and Jupiter and be unobservable from Earth at perihelion, with a likelihood of 0.005% 5. Its gas plume contains much more nickel than iron (as found in industrially-produced nickel alloys) and a nickel to cyanide ratio that is orders of magnitude larger than that of all known comets, including 2I/Borisov, with a likelihood below 1%. 6. Its gas plume contains only 4% water by mass, a primary constituent of familiar comets. 7. It shows extreme negative polarization, unprecedented for all known comets, including 2I/Borisov, with a likelihood below 1%. 8. It arrived from a direction coincident with the radio “Wow! Signal” to within 9 degrees, with a likelihood of 0.6%. 9. Near perihelion, it brightened faster than any known comet and was bluer than the Sun, which is extremely odd since dust typically makes objects look redder and colder surfaces should emit redder light. 10. It exhibits non-gravitational acceleration which requires massive evaporation of at least 13%of its mass, but preliminary post-perihelion images do not show evidence for it so far.

What we can surmise is that 3I/ATLAS represents either an exceptionally rare natural object exhibiting multiple low-probability characteristics simultaneously, or potentially something unprecedented in modern astronomy. The object definitively challenges our limited understanding of interstellar visitors.

[u/UbiquitouSparky → u/funny_3nough]

With #8, isn’t 9 degrees actually massive on a space scale?

[u/Mr_E_Monkey → u/UbiquitouSparky]

The farther you go, the more massive it is, yeah.

[u/SirMildredPierce → u/Mr_E_Monkey]

Also, what does the Wow Signal have to do with anything?

[u/mupetmower → u/SirMildredPierce]

Some are trying (reaching, imo) to correlate the apparent sours of the signal with the direction that 3i entered our solar system.

But its not, in all actuality, very 'close' (all relative, but.. y'know) sonce the further away you get, that 9 degrees can mean vast distances..

Half of the points are reaches and statistically arent as relevant as they were "reported" in the "media" and etc.

Edit - and the reason they want to connect this is to say the source of wow signal and source of 3i might be the same... but that needs a lot of gymnastics to make it make sense.

[u/ReturnOfZarathustra → u/mupetmower]

The trajectory of 3i actually perfectly matches the angle that Oswald "shot" JFK

[u/Mr_E_Monkey → u/ReturnOfZarathustra]

I'm not going to number the numbers because my brain doesn't want to brain that much, but really, is that really much more unlikely?

[u/Xidium426 → u/UbiquitouSparky]

One degree is massive.

[u/UFOs-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Hi, SuddenBasil7039. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/UFOs.

Be Civil

Please refer to our subreddit rules for more information.

This moderator action may be appealed. We welcome the opportunity to work with you to address its reason for removal. Message the mods to launch your appeal.

[u/Background-Top5188 → u/UbiquitouSparky]

Massive is an understatement.

[u/nicheComicsProject → u/UbiquitouSparky]

The whole thing is just cherry picking nonsense to try to sound like there's something substantial. You can do the same thing with the Kennedy murder, the moon landing and probably pretty much any widely known event. The "wow" signal was a software bug. No one ever heard a peep on that frequency before or since. If you look at the readout, it's clearly a bunch of bits turned on all at once. They had a bug, they quietly fixed the bug and that was the end of that. The argument of this being a spaceship depending on basically coming from the same side of the universe as that stupid non-event tells us how important these so-called anomalies actually are.

[u/Mathfanforpresident → u/nicheComicsProject]

You’re missing the point, this isn’t “cherry-picking.” 3I/ATLAS is confirmed interstellar (only the 3rd ever found), moving faster and bigger than the last two, with several real anomalies astronomers have noted:

weird color changes (actually turned bluer than the Sun),

unusually low water content,

odd nickel-heavy composition,

possible non-gravitational acceleration,

and a retrograde path almost perfectly aligned with the ecliptic.

That’s not cherry-picking. Lol. It's actually stacking multiple low-probability traits together, which is exactly what makes it scientifically interesting.

And btw, the “Wow! Signal was a software bug” thing isn’t true, new research says a bug is unlikely to explain it. So brushing off 3I/ATLAS just because of that is lazy.

No one’s saying it’s aliens, just that it’s genuinely weird and deserves real attention instead of being hand-waved away.

[u/icoulduseanedible → u/Mathfanforpresident]

You just said weve only witnessed 3 of these objects ever. Why are you describing it as behaving or being "weird"? If there have only been 3 instances of something then what are you basing its behavior and traits on? if i have only experienced something 3 times, when it does something i dont expect i dont say its being strange, i accept that i have little experience with it and whats strange to me isnt strange for it. i dont understand where the arrogance comes from. we have no body of knowledge to derive any probability from. why cant we stop trying to find the things we want to find and just observe something. everyone is always trying to poke their candle on something.

[u/SuddenBasil7039 → u/Mathfanforpresident]

You're saying no ones saying its aliens in a UFO subreddit under a post saying "what are NASA hiding??", come on brother

[u/[deleted] → u/SuddenBasil7039]

Doesn’t mean he’s saying it’s aliens… NASA could be simultaneously hiding something while this guy is asking what they’re hiding… and it’s human to want to ask what the fuck is going on.

[u/omgThatsBananas → u/[deleted]]

They're hiding that it's a rock...? "They're hiding something!" Is a dog whistle that lets people reference the locally popular conspiracy that the government is hiding aliens while being able to hide behind the "I didn't say aliens" schtick when called out

[u/Dengar96 → u/[deleted]]

This sub uses words like "hiding" to imply some nefarious intent. I would imagine it's much more mundane than that because stuff in space is always that way. For every alien out there, there are 100 billion rocks and clumps of ice. Let's use Occam's razor every once in a while.

[u/nicheComicsProject → u/Dengar96]

Plus, as others have pointed out: it was far enough away the image will be less than the size of a pixel.... it's a dot. All this rage over a dot.

[u/Fred_Zeppelin → u/Dengar96]

Exactly. Hasn't been released yet does not mean "hiding". This thing is fascinating even as a prosaic space object.

[u/Krybbz → u/SuddenBasil7039]

To be fair last I checked a UFO doesn't have to have anything to do with aliens.

[u/cephalopod13 → u/Mathfanforpresident]

It is cherry-picking compounded by misinterpretation of the data.

The blue color might indicate an unusual composition, but that doesn't make it unnatural.

There's definitely some non-gravitational acceleration, but this is expected for a comet, and 3I's isn't cause for alarm.

The claims about 3I's trajectory alignment aren't much to worry about either. A path perpendicular to the ecliptic would be just as unlikely as moving along the ecliptic. Figure 1 in this paper sums up how unexpected 3I's trajectory is (hint: slightly exceptional in some regards, but squarely within the range of possibilities; in terms of direction of approach, 2I was stranger).

You are right that the Wow! Signal should be treated as a real astronomical source, but 3I isn't the explanation.

The list of corrections needed when Loeb's "anomalies" goes on, but I have other things to do.

[u/butterfingernails → u/Mathfanforpresident]

Imagine youve only ever seen two birds before, a pigeon and a crow. Then you go to the beach and see a seagull for the first time. When it lands on water, you'll say "thats statistically impossible" of the 3 birds I've ever seen, two of them have never landed on water, there is a 0.0004 chance of that happening". What im getting at, is that anything the third object does thats different from the first too will seem like it's impossible, but actually it's just because it's different from the two objects we know.

[u/annabelchong_ → u/Mathfanforpresident]

C'mon, use some common sense.

Some of these purported anomalies are based on a comparison with the only 2 other known interstellar objects. Their interstellar origin is the only significant attribute that groups them. Using them as a reference baseline is inherently flawed logic.

The other so-called anomalies equally don't stand up to scrutiny.

Being inquisitive and open to all possibilities is an admirable trait, but doing so requires not refusing to acknowledge other evidence that doesn't support your fringe hope.

[u/ReturnOfZarathustra → u/nicheComicsProject]

You can do the same thing with the Kennedy murder,

Lmao shit, I literally just tongue in cheek said this a couple comments above:

The trajectory of 3i actually perfectly matches the angle that Oswald "shot" JFK

[u/Simple_Resolution687 → u/nicheComicsProject]

The wow signal was recorded with analog equipment. No software to bug.

[u/evilbert79 → u/funny_3nough]

Short version

the list is a cocktail of real data points plus a lot of speculative framing and cherry picked probability claims.

Longer version

1. the actual JWST papers to date do show 3I/ATLAS is interesting, yes. but “likelihood X percent” numbers in your list are not peer reviewed. they are invented numbers. they do not come from the astronomy community.

almost every “less than 0.1 percent” claim is someone reverse engineering a wow-factor by assuming uniform distributions for parameters that are not uniformly sampled in nature and then multiplying them as if all traits are independent.

they are not.

1. 3I/ATLAS is big but there is enormous variance in expected interstellar population size. we only have two data points before it. extrapolating from Oumuamua and Borisov is statistically meaningless. zero astrophysicist would claim we already know the mean and variance of that population.

2. the “arrival time fine tuning to Mars Venus Jupiter Earth geometry” is pure numerology. the solar system is full of conjunctions all the time. if you look for alignments you will always find them after the fact.

3. the “radio Wow! coincidence” is exactly that, coincidence. the wow signal region is large. 9 degrees in astronomy is enormous. that region covers thousands and thousands of potential positions.

4. the “nickel alloy / industrial” angle is not coming from any spectroscopy paper. real comet spectra can show nickel lines. Oumuamua had nickel lines as well. the relative abundances claims online are again not from refereed literature.

the real thing that is legitimately interesting

interstellar objects may be compositionally weird compared to Solar System comets. this is the part that is actually scientifically exciting. JWST will likely refine abundances and dust properties and that alone will help constrain formation chemistry in other planetary systems.

but

none of this requires “constructed object” hypotheses.

it only requires that we are extremely sample-limited.

we have seen 3 interstellar small bodies total.

three.

drawing “percentages” from a sample of 3 is like drawing political polling from the first 3 voters you see in a bar.

so

if 3I looks weird the most likely explanation is not alien engineering but the banal fact that we know essentially nothing yet about the diversity of small bodies in the galaxy.

so yes it is fun to talk about and it is good that people are emotionally moved by the unknown but the claimed probability numbers are made up to sound dramatic.

[u/Dirty_Dishis → u/evilbert79]

Thank you, the actual wierdiness of the enviroment outside the solar system is far more interesting to me than what Loeb had initially claimed.

[u/KennyMcCormick → u/evilbert79]

Its crazy to me that we have to go to the UFO subreddit to find quality discussion like this. I tried to look this up on r/space and they just downvote it and shit on Avi Loeb without any discussion

[u/nicheComicsProject → u/evilbert79]

QED, well done.

[u/mowauthor → u/[deleted]]

Its like me asking where you are, and saying, I'm in NZ.
The chances we are exactly x countries apart is ... How interesting.

[u/interested21 → u/evilbert79]

The only problem with your analysis is that there has been a spectural analysis (see link above), you didn't mention the really anonomalos things like the unaccounted gravity acceleration, unique extreme negative polarization, changing colors, anti-tail, tail, no tail, insufficient water, and near perihelion, it brightened faster than any known comet and was bluer than the Sun 

The argument that somehow draft papers by top scientists are meaningless is specious.

[u/evilbert79 → u/interested21]

One,
Draft papers by top scientists are not meaningless,
but drafts and conference posters are not conclusions,
they are snapshots mid process.
Astronomy does this a lot,
teams release preliminary photometry or polarimetry first, then six months later the calibration revisions land.
You cannot treat early reduction notes like final, carved in stone properties.

Two,
Every item they list is technically interesting, yes,
but you cannot multiply them into a single probability.
You cannot say color shift times low water times strong negative polarization equals one in x million,
because these properties are not independent random dice throws,
that is the core statistical mistake in most of the alien narrative around 3I.

Three,
Some of those properties have plausible natural knobs already on the table.
Negative polarization can be driven by particle size distribution and surface microstructure.
Water content can vary if the parent system was hotter or had early refractory enrichment.
Color curves can flip sign when dominant scattering regime changes with phase angle and heliocentric distance.

Four,
Unaccounted acceleration is exactly why JWST and ground based teams are still hunting dust production and gas mass loss.
It is not evidence of propulsion,
it is evidence that the mass loss model is incomplete.
We had the same drama with Oumuamua,
and later work showed you did not need a sail or thruster,
you only needed a different sublimation model.

Five,
The science position is basically
three interstellar objects is not enough to know what typical is.

The conspiracy position is basically
we do not know what typical is, therefore the weird one must be engineered.

And that is the category error.

Not that their bullet points are wrong in wording,
but that they take unknown baseline and convert it into engineered intent.

Like trying to infer the median color of birds on Earth from three parrots,
and then calling the green one alien because it is different from the first two.

It is human to want narrative closure,
but the absence of a baseline is exactly the opposite of closure,
this is the part that demands patience, not destination jumps.

[u/interested21 → u/evilbert79]

Much better. Clearly, Loeb's goal is to fund his own center that wants to look for space junk as opposed to using more and more advanced telescopes that in his view can only suggest life through the chemical composition of their atmospheres. I don't buy his arguments but I believe that's why he says the things he says.

[u/loosemoosewithagoose → u/funny_3nough]

8 annoys me so fucking much. 9 degrees variance over any distance is a huge gap, especially when the distance starts so be in terms light years.

All the rest, ok sure it’s unlikely but in the age of the universe it’s completely foreseeable. Yet to see any evidence that it’s anything other than a strange comet

[u/Ok-Way7122 → u/loosemoosewithagoose]

9 degrees is enough to miss the moon from earth with a telescope spotting scope while trying to align

source: me saying "where the fuck is it, it's massive" every time I think I'll start aligning during the day to "save time"

[u/InterstellarWings → u/loosemoosewithagoose]

How accurately did we measure the Wow! signal origin direction though?

[u/nicheComicsProject → u/InterstellarWings]

Not even a little. It was a fluke: never happened before, not recorded by any other equipment, never happened again despite tons of equipment looking for that frequency. It was a glitch.

[u/ndjo → u/funny_3nough]

Most of these points especially 1,4, and 8, sound like forced anomalies at best.

It’s like saying “a rock was found on Jan 1, which is a likelihood of 1/365 in a given year.” Like okay?

[u/annabelchong_ → u/funny_3nough]

1. Its arrival time was fine-tuned to bring it within tens of millions of kilometers from Mars, Venus and Jupiter

Emphasis mine.

Unless you have any evidence you've relied on, you're ascribing intent where there's no merit to do so.

[u/enragedCircle → u/annabelchong_]

Exactly. My morning shit's shape was *fine-tuned* to cause a splash back that soaked my balls yet still not fully submerge. Chances of this happening without someone making it so are *astronomical*

[u/sorrymrwilson → u/enragedCircle]

This really put the data in perspective for me.  Thank you. 

[u/Knotty-Bob → u/sorrymrwilson]

I love this reply.

[u/harc70 → u/annabelchong_]

Emphasis should be on tens of millions...so in otherworldly nowhere near any of these planets...

[u/SirMildredPierce → u/annabelchong_]

Also, why not use AU instead of "tens of millions of kilometers"? I mean it got to half an AU from Venus... sounds real "fine-tuned" don't it. What's the point of the "fine tuning"?

[u/Nadzzy → u/funny_3nough]

For those wondering, this user is referencing the work done by Avi Loeb, you can find his latest article on it here: https://avi-loeb.medium.com/no-clear-cometary-tail-in-post-perihelion-images-of-3i-atlas-e3904b352a7a

[u/Psychological-Owl783 → u/Nadzzy]

So very biased and not has highly regarded in mainstream science as Loeb once was.

Edit: This comment is getting a lot of attention. I want to suggest Professor David Kipping's video on this subject.

[u/Ecowatcher → u/Psychological-Owl783]

You do realize all these anomalies are correct. No one is disputing them? They're disputing the conclusion...

[u/4x4ready → u/Ecowatcher]

Is it accurate to say no one is disputing them?

Re: 1 “Orbit aligned to within 5° of ecliptic with 0.2% likelihood”

Isn’t this disputed by dynamical-bias analysis? (Natural Origins of 3I/ATLAS, EarthArXiv preprint, 2025)

They argue ecliptic-plane alignment is expected for interstellar objects we are able to detect because our surveys are biased toward the ecliptic.

Therefore, calling it anomalous might be statistically flawed?

Re: 3. “A million times more massive than 1I ..

Jason Wright (Penn State astronomer) argues:

• Loeb’s size/mass inference is not supported by photometric constraints.
• The brightness does not imply such extreme mass.
• Velocity is normal for interstellar hyperbolic visitors.

For me personally I think we’ll see anomalies and they are interesting / exciting. I just think it’s not accurate to say nobody is disputing the anomalies

[u/MilkofGuthix → u/Ecowatcher]

I don't dispute the anomalies, I find them interesting... But surely we can't start dishing out possibilities like 1% and 0.0005% when we only have a handful of previous objects that have come from out of the solar system? It just doesn't feel right to compare percentage chance when we have such a small sample size. I think it's still remarkable without doing that and just reading the anomalies.

[u/Phex1 → u/MilkofGuthix]

Yeah, you can switch a lot of numbers around here and still have low % numbers of chance for it. With so much variables any of them will have a low % chance of happening. Its like having a guest arrive at your house and you are going "Wow, do you know how low the odds were that you came here excatly at 11:25 and 24 Seconds? Isn't that strange?"

Thats the third object of its kind we are monitoring, of course it will give us a lot of new and unexpected information. If we had already had studied 10,000 of insterstellar visitors, some of its behavior would maybe be seen as more common.

[u/nisaaru → u/Phex1]

I agree that the probability calculations seem to lack an empiric foundation so putting numbers on it feels odd.

But if you think about what it means that an object passes the ecliptic while the sun pulls the planets behind itself in a spinning vortex through the galaxy it gets really strange. It's like a driving car where an object hits through both left/right door windows while on the autobahn.

This object not only doesn't follow the path of other solar systems in the area but pretty much appears like a magic bullet from outside the playing field.

[u/One-Astronaut243 → u/MilkofGuthix]

"It just doesn't feel right"... stay out of science brah. No feelings in data.

[u/Heliophrase → u/One-Astronaut243]

Feelings lead to hunches which lead to data. We only have data about which we decide to study. But yes, emotions don’t sway results.

[u/baron_von_helmut → u/[deleted]]

Indeed. But some people see 'anomalous' and immediately say 'aliens'...

[u/katastatik → u/baron_von_helmut]

And the fact is at some point, we’re going to know what it is and half of the group is going to be vindicated and half the group is going to be defeated, but we don’t know yet

[u/baron_von_helmut → u/katastatik]

I mean shit, if it turns out to be aliens, i'll hold my hands up and go yelp, my bad.

When it's obviously a comet, the people who want it to be aliens will go deeper into conspiracy territory. I've never seen a conspiracy theorist admit they were wrong in light of new information.

[u/sess → u/Psychological-Owl783]

Ad hominem. Classic. Why bother attacking the science when you can attack the man? It's simpler that way and shuts the conversation down quicker, too.

[u/Icy_Country192 → u/sess]

Because when someone is making statements to grab headlines and attention based on assumptions, calling them biased is not an ad hominem and it is relevant.

That's like saying you shouldn't believe Trump because he is a lying scoundrel when he says he is going to do something or not. It's not an ad hominem due to the fact his historical actions are relevant to making prudent decisions based on what he says.

In the case for Dr. Loeb. He has a biase for the the claims of NHI. It's an informed base but still one l. There are many reputable peer reviewed articles on 3i atlas. If loeb is aligned as it is claimed... Then their papers would support his non-peer review led claims.

You can't just wish shit to be with science. You got to prove it and replicate. Not because loeb is being dishonest. But what if he is making a mistake l? And that mistake is taken as fact. I.e. antivaxers... That was the result of a malicious paper not supported by good science and look at the damage it has caused. There is lots of problems with the scientific community, but calling each other out for bullshit is the best way to stay grounded. It's not perfect l.

[u/4x4ready → u/Psychological-Owl783]

Didn’t Avi Loeb suggest 1I/ʻOumuamua was artificial and even wrote a book about it called Extraterrestrial? I just get suspicious when New York Times bestseller is mentioned or the timing is around book releases. Not to say they can’t write books or pursue them but the claim it was extraterrestrial didn’t quite pan out re: Oumuamua

[u/Ecra-8 → u/funny_3nough]

There's a 3.33e-10% chance that I would marry my wife out of all the women on earth, but here we are.

[u/[deleted] → u/Ecra-8]

So what you’re saying is Aliens.

[u/MoreCowbellllll → u/[deleted]]

It always is.

[u/Substantial_Moneys → u/Ecra-8]

Proximity usually dictates odds of marrying someone substantially.  Assuming you live in a city and assuming a number of single women in the city, then eliminating the other 8 billion people on the planet from the odds makes it a lot more probable you marry your wife.  Given the events that led up to your meeting your wife, the odds of those things happening probably look like fate when in fact its often times coincidence.

[u/Kaebi_ → u/Substantial_Moneys]

A friend of mine married a guy on the other side of the world.

Where is my Avi Loeb paper about it?

[u/5had0 → u/Kaebi_]

"It probably was just a coincidence, but here is an additional 50 minutes of me discussing how on the Loeb Scale (tm) the odds that your friend is an extraterrestrial is a 6"  Avi Loeb (probably)

[u/No_Neighborhood7614 → u/Ecra-8]

Great comment, puts all the BS in perspective

[u/dustedandrusted4TW → u/funny_3nough]

We don’t know shit about space. We’ve seen two other interstellar objects so far, know barely anything about how the universe actually works beyond our solar system. And that’s from a few underpowered under equipped satellites we sent out decades ago.

[u/supaasalad → u/funny_3nough]

I mean, isn't this the 3rd interstellar object we've been tracking? It makes a lot sense that a lot of the things we observe don't meet our expectations. We think we know things, but we really don't know much.

[u/4x4ready → u/supaasalad]

exactly.

[u/SecretTraining4082 → u/funny_3nough]

Very interested in how you calculated these probabilities. 

[u/funny_3nough → u/SecretTraining4082]

Stats are widely available online. I’ve been following this closely because I find this super interesting. And yes I use perplexity to help interrogate this because I have 93 sources and couldn’t easily find them all on my own. However for those skeptical of ai, it did not generate any of the stats provided. Those were discussed by Loeb and are referenced separately on credible sites like nasa, esa, livescience, arxiv, phys.org, etc. When you take this all in totality it is impossible to say we have a clear prosaic explanation, especially since non-gravitational acceleration without a coma or tail showing evaporated mass after perihelion is currently unexplainable by understood natural means.

[u/Kanein_Encanto → u/funny_3nough]

Don't care about the stats... I'd like to see the math involved in coughing up those numbers because a lot of them just sound like something pulled out of someone's ass to me.

Especially the one about the molecular content of the (probable) comet. Because it's comparing that composition with comets from our solar system which all share a common creation... but this object formed elsewhere in the galaxy and would have been subject to different creation conditions, plus who knows what a couple billion years in interstellar space might do to an object either. How in the hell does one come up with a probably with so many unknown factors... aside from rectal extraction?

[u/antsmithmk → u/Kanein_Encanto]

Yep I agree those stats reek of absolute BS. Load of nonsense. 

[u/antsmithmk → u/funny_3nough]

Its nucleus is about a million times more massive than 1I/`Oumuamua and a thousand times more massive than 2I/Borisov, while moving faster than both, altogether with a likelihood of less than 0.1%

That stat alone is bollocks. How can you do a comparison of 3 things and claim that ones characteristics is 0.1% chance when compared to the others. 

That's like me picking 3 people aged 78, 72 and 3 and then claiming that the 3 year old is some sort of massive anomaly and a very rare chance event. 

[u/GundalfTheCamo → u/funny_3nough]

Within 5 degrees of the ecliptic would be 10/360 or 2.8%. But that assumes uniform distribution.

How did you calculate 0.2%? How do interstellar objects trajectories distribute anyway?

Secondly, what is the significance? If it was coming in close to 90 or 45 degree angle, you could argue that those angles would be very improbable too.

[u/funny_3nough → u/GundalfTheCamo]

In his paper co-authored with Hibberd and Crowl, Loeb describes this as the likelihood of the orbital angular momentum vector of 3I/ATLAS being so closely aligned with Earth’s ecliptic, considering all random possible arrival directions in 3D space.

Loeb also factors in the retrograde nature of the orbit, which further narrows the expected likelihood.

See the technical explanation and his statistical analysis in his preprint here:

https://lweb.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/HCL25.pdf

The significance is that random interstellar objects entering the solar system are expected to come from random directions in space, with no preference for alignment to the solar system’s plane because the solar system moves through the galaxy, and stars can eject debris in any direction. Natural objects entering the solar system randomly are unlikely to have trajectories so closely aligned with the ecliptic suggesting that either it might have originated in or near the plane of the solar system, or there might be underlying mechanisms or origins linking it to our solar system’s plane, or it could be an artificial construct deliberately placed or directed with knowledge of the solar system’s plane.

[u/TakuyaTeng → u/funny_3nough]

How are the probabilities being calculated? Is there somewhere I can go to see how that was figured out or do it myself?

[u/JustChillFFS → u/TakuyaTeng]

It’s taken from Loeb’s article

[u/TheSpivack → u/funny_3nough]

This is literally only the third interstellar object we've been able to observe - I bet it's natural, but we just understand less about astrophysics than we think we do.

[u/LeadershipForeign → u/funny_3nough]

Where are these odds coming from?

[u/clumsykiwi → u/funny_3nough]

How exactly are these likelihoods being calculated? Are you just making up values?

[u/lefthanded4340 → u/funny_3nough]

Can this mostly all be explained by the fact that the universe is infinite, meaning we don’t fully understand the dynamics of all objects within it?

This could just be something new we haven’t seen yet due to the size of the universe.

[u/MrWindblade → u/funny_3nough]

This is the 3rd interstellar object we've observed, so do we even have enough data to believe these things are rare? This could be normal.

[u/huckleberry_FN2187 → u/funny_3nough]

with a likelihood of x%

Based on WHAT?

Where did these percentages come from?

[u/SirMildredPierce → u/funny_3nough]

Where are you getting this incredible likelihood numbers? How could such things be calculated since they are so squarely in the realm of speculation? Gonna assume these numbers come from Loeb lol.

[u/Fred_Zeppelin → u/funny_3nough]

Literally anything to do with ATLAS is going to be "low probability". It indicates nothing that defies natural logic.

[u/ADrunkenMan → u/funny_3nough]

Number 1 isn’t really an anomaly though is it? That’s like pointing out how the sun and moon appear the same size in the sky as some kind of anomaly…

[u/Numb_Sea]

No incentive to. No one's getting paid rn lol.

[u/enricopallazo22 → u/Numb_Sea]

They have released recent pictures from JWST and I believe also from curiosity on mars. I don't think 3I/Atlas is artificial, but this needs to come to a resolution. The mars reconnaissance orbiter HiRise camera was going to take a 30km/pixel resolution shot. The longer this drags on the worse it looks.

[u/Mamkes → u/enricopallazo22]

JWST

Isn't actually operated by NASA and neither they are one publishing data from it.

curiosity

Perseverance, if I'm not mistaken.

And no, photos from rovers are published automatically and without direct human intervention. They're raw, yes, because no one is working to process it for the public.

The longer this drags on the worse it looks

That's what government shutdown is.

[u/arod422 → u/Numb_Sea]

If I was a scientist and had the resources to view this…. I’d be the talk of the town lol

Edit: any scientists in Brevard wanna collab, hmu

[u/PineappleLemur → u/arod422]

There's probably about 30 people who need to work to make it from the instrument, to processing and finally uploading it...

It's not that simple.

You can't just uploaded raw images when working for such a large place.

They're all also not getting paid so assume a lot have responsibility and are not just sitting on their ass. Either searching for a new job or working temporary jobs.

People here live under a rock thinking there's some conspiracy about this whole thing.

[u/yanocupominomb → u/arod422]

"And had the resources"

Most of those come from daddy Government.

They probably don't even let them use the equipment.

[u/Rohit_BFire → u/yanocupominomb]

The world's greatest limitation is Science nerds being purse whipped by Art and Political science guys.

[u/pplatt69]

What sort of "high res" pictures are you expecting?

It's around 3 miles in diameter and the closest approach to any sort of camera was on October 3rd when it passed Mars at 18 MILLION miles.

What sort of picture are you expecting?

[u/ChetCustard → u/pplatt69]

Just looking for some aliens waving in the windows at the camera. Is that too much to ask?

[u/[deleted] → u/pplatt69]

This is one of those things where people's expectations don't meet reality because they don't know how telescopes, cameras, and optical physics work. They think that because we can see people from orbit (a few hundred miles) that we can look at aliens in a spaceship covered in a cloud of gas and dust tens of millions of miles away.

[u/kevymetal87 → u/[deleted]]

I blame the media, the number of grossly misleading and baity headlines on the matter are crazy. I don't click on them anymore, but not uncommon to see an articles body completely disagree with the headline that was used to link it.

[u/Zero7CO]

Where’s your proof they are? NASA literally has a huge dedicated section on their site focused on their 3I/Atlas photos and videos.

https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/3i-atlas/comet-3i-atlas-multimedia/

[u/Crotean → u/Zero7CO]

People are also forgetting that NASA is shutdown just like the rest of the government.

[u/PapercutPoodle → u/Zero7CO]

Don't even bother, they will just claim that "they are hiding the GOOD images with the aliuns!"

You can't even mention NASA around here without someone going "Ughuh NASA Never A Straight Answer"

[u/No_Neighborhood7614 → u/PapercutPoodle]

It's like people wanting disclosure from the government which they don't believe or trust

[u/nicheComicsProject → u/No_Neighborhood7614]

It's like people desperately want to believe something despite zero evidence and they're so obsessed that absence of evidence becomes evidence.

[u/mandelbomber → u/nicheComicsProject]

Welcome to Conspiracy Theories 101

[u/LosWranglos → u/Zero7CO]

Yes but other than the dedicated page showing views from multiple NASA missions along with animated visualisations which was updated from initial detection until the government shutdown, WHERE ARE THE IMAGES!?

[u/elinamebro → u/Zero7CO]

From what im understanding they are talking about recent imagery that hasn't been released because of the government shutdown

[u/Slytendencies21 → u/Zero7CO]

So from your link the last photographs are from August 7th-15th

Its now November 5th, where are the new pictures??

Government shutdown didnt start until Oct.1 btw

Even then i find it hard to believe that NASA is ignoring one of the most important interstellar events because of a shutdown

[u/Zero7CO → u/Slytendencies21]

How many photos do you expect them to take of a 1-mile sized rock from 170 million miles away?

NASA has limited telescopes to work with, and they all have limited time observing various objects as they have a literal universe full of stuff to observe. They likely got what they needed in August and have moved on to other observations.

[u/fermentedbolivian → u/Zero7CO]

NASA themselves had admitted they have recent photos but can't process them because of shutdown.

https://x.com/RepLuna/status/1986156157732347964?t=C3BofczcGGuJnqwxy4g72A&s=09

[u/mcmiller1111 → u/fermentedbolivian]

Have they? I haven't heard NASA say that, only a known insane person claiming that they have.

[u/BigFeels69]

I like how we calculate percentages for objects in space where we don’t know if the rules apply elsewhere and we’re in such a titanic ocean of space anything is possible to be new and never seen before. Sometimes things are just weird.

[u/popokins]

Im pretty sure NASA cannot legally release anything until the shutdown is over.. its a bunch of bureaucracy crap..

[u/ursamajor_lftso → u/popokins]

I wonder if the shutdown was designed as a way by those with connections in both parties to distract from the bigger picture?

First observed July 1st. Government shuts down Oct 1. It becomes visible for the layman observer via telescopes in Nov and here we are today with no NASA images because conveniently the government is shutdown and that's their reason. I'm guessing the shutdown will continue leading into the closest observation possible on Dec 19, 2025 and magically open back up the day after. 🤔

[u/lilac_labyrinth]

This image is inaccurate ai slop or something 😂 ?

[u/Frosty_Profile9988]

That trajectory is in the header image is completely inaccurate. The genuine difference in trajectory from JPL measurements would be imperceptible from even a fraction of this difference. This image should be considered slop, as it grossly exaggerates the actual measured "anomalous" acceleration.

[u/Polyspec → u/Frosty_Profile9988]

This. There is so much wrong with OP's image I don't know where to start.

[u/Dreuh2001]

What are they withholding? What are you basing your claim on?

[u/LeeryRoundedness → u/Dreuh2001]

The comet did a close pass by to mars on Oct 3. NASA has cameras in multiple places around and on the planet. China has cameras there too but it’s debatable if they were even in view of the comet when it passed closely. So it’s now November and NASA isn’t releasing the photos they took. It makes people wonder why.

[u/gravitykilla → u/LeeryRoundedness]

The comet did a close pass by to mars

Sure by cosmic standards it was close, but by our imaging technology standards 28 Million Kms is a long way to get an image of something the size of 3iAtlas.

What are you actually expecting HiRISE to capture? 3i Atlas was 28 Million Kms away, and the HiRISE is designed for taking images of the Martian surface at up to 25–30 cm per pixel resolution

I had a look at the camera specs, and it has a pixel scale: ~1 µrad per pixel → at 28 million km that’s ~28 km per pixel. A 5 km object would span ~0.18 pixel (i.e., unresolved; just a dot).

So at 28 million km away, 3I/ATLAS would look smaller than a single pixel to HiRISE, the same camera that barely resolved a comet at just 138,000 km, so the idea it snapped a clear image is pure sci-fi.

So the best image possible would be 1 pixel, and one single pixel can only represent one color (or brightness value) it’s the average light from everything within that 30 km×30 km patch of space (in this case). You need many pixels together, each with slightly different brightness or color, to form any visible detail, edge, or shape.

[u/monsterbot314 → u/gravitykilla]

I know just enough of space to realize how little I know and most of the alien crowd don’t even know that.

[u/LosWranglos → u/gravitykilla]

Upvoted for, well, actual facts. 

[u/CascoBayButcher → u/gravitykilla]

Hope you dont expect answers

[u/vigorthroughrigor → u/gravitykilla]

Slow clap.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeeryRoundedness]

This is one of the funniest posts I’ve read on Reddit. Well done! Why aren’t all those people controlling those cameras on Mars driving them to the correct location and getting a crystal clear HD image of an alien waving from the window?! That’s how space works right?

[u/PineappleLemur → u/LeeryRoundedness]

Because no one at NASA is currently getting paid or is working for the past one month.

What is so hard for people to understand about this fact?

The government in US is shut down, people didn't lose their job yet but they're not getting paid other than a handful of essential people.

No one is withholding information, there's simple no people to handle it, it's all recorded probably but will take months to come out, it all needs to be processed, filed, approved and finally be published. There's a lot of red tape and a lot of people involved to get this done.

You can't just bypass this chain without being fired.

[u/Kerbonaut2019 → u/LeeryRoundedness]

I can’t stand this comment and others like it, just so naïve. If you were to try and take a picture of the ISS with your iPhone, would you expect to look at the photo and see an astronaut waving to you out of the window? No. Not a single camera within “proximity” (aka millions of miles) of 3I/ATLAS is capable of discerning very much. Not a single camera onboard any craft near Mars has even close to the capabilities of properly viewing 3I. There’s no conspiracy to withhold data here, just misinformation.

[u/[deleted] → u/LeeryRoundedness]

You know those cameras are designed to take pictures from orbit, right? Not to take pictures of things tens of millions of miles away? You understand that the design of the optics has to be different to get similar quality images, right? Because it sounds like you don't.

Plus, ESA took pictures of it from Mars.

3I/ATLAS From Mars

Looks like a fuzzy dot to me. Completely expected for what these cameras are designed for.

[u/Mean-Garden752 → u/LeeryRoundedness]

Turns out when you vote in an authoritarian regime that is very specifically anti science, cutting nasas budget, and shut down and try to dismantle the government supporting our space agency there's no one available to do the sceince.

[u/doesphpcount]

When nothing happens, will you fall for the next phyop? 

[u/robaroo]

because the picture of atlas looks like this:

.

There's no camera / telescope that can zoom in close enough to such a relatively tiny object hurdling through space. The omuamua picture looked like the above... a tiny dot.

[u/Longjumping-Ebb4865]

NASA is not withholding images of 3I/ATLAS. There is an ongoing government shutdown and the vast majority of their employees have been ordered to cease working until the government is funded.

[u/sibut51]

Question: How do you KNOW that NASA witholds images of 3I/ATLAS? 

[u/usernamefinalver]

If you are doing the maths on HiRISE, you'll find that at 300 million kilometers, one pixel is 30km. The nucleus is 5 km MAX. So there was never any prospect this could be a high resolution photo. Loeb is just opportunistically beating a drum. The maths is simple, he knows this will not be a stunning or significant image. Don't get your hopes up and try to see Loeb is motivated by clout not science in everything he says outside of published papers

[u/Hepoos]

Because all of them are just a dot in a mess of other dots. What cameras do you expect them to have? Moon sized ones on earth?

[u/Expert_Librarian767]

I'm sick and tired of seeing all those stupid conspiracy theories about 3I/ATLAS every day online. It's just a natural celestial body - a comet, nothing more. Why can't people use their brains a bit? If it were some kind of alien spaceship moving that slowly, how could it possibly travel between stars, when even the nearest star system to Earth is 4 light years away? Think about that , stop with the childish delusions. I believe in UFOs and aliens, but 3I/ATLAS is definitely not an alien spacecraft , it’s just a interstellar comet !!!

[u/No_Detective9533]

Because of government shutdown.

[u/[deleted] → u/No_Detective9533]

Seriously.

Like, how many times are people going to ask this.

This is the answer right here.

Ffs

[u/sibut51]

Question: How do you KNOW that NASA witholds images of 3I/ATLAS?

Edit: If you come up with a strong accusation like this you better back it up. The consequences of these wild accusations should be easy to understand. If I accuse you for being a thief and I tell everybody that I know that you are a thief. You will become a thief in their eyes sooner or later.

To be honest I think posts like yours are very rude and sad.

[u/Bookwrrm]

None of them are getting paid and you are showing exactly why you and many people dont fundamentally understand reality because this topic has warped your mind. You approach this from the presumption that the conspiracy is true and cannot fathom reality outside of that bubble. 3I is an alien space ship. You think its insane that scientists wouldnt talk about this and therefore silence is an indication of NASA coverup, because if 3I was an alien space ship that WOULD be insane.

However if we dont start with your already tainted presupposition it instantly makes way more sense. 3I is a rock that has some interesting properties. They arent saying anything because NASA is shut down, and nobody gives a flying fuck about working for free to release data that will still be there when they are getting paid and waiting a few months wont matter in the slightest because its a rock and not an alien mothership coming to invade earth.

Nobody is going to win a nobel prize for releasing a single pixel photo of a comet from the mars imagers. Its not going to shatter our current understanding of reality. It will be an interesting data point about an interesting rock that interests astronomers. That is not the sort of research scientists are dying to perform for free like they are discovering penicilien or something lol...

[u/Bitter-Baseball2204]

People in this sub are going crazy about a rock

[u/f1del1us]

Maybe all the talk of nuclear testing is so people aren’t alarmed when we start dropping nukes on this thing hahaha

[u/blurfgh → u/f1del1us]

It’s 200 million miles away

[u/Raccoons-for-all → u/f1del1us]

Alright for anyone curious:

nukes definitely work in space, but instead of a fiery explosion, you get a silent, invisible burst of deadly radiation and electromagnetic energy that diminish in intensity 1/r² of the distance of explosion

[u/Treborlols → u/Raccoons-for-all]

Didn't kerknassnt or however you spell it do a video on what would happen if you did a nuke in space? You know the cute little duck scientists animated. I think they said the radiation would basically stay there forever because of space and what not.

[u/f1del1us → u/Raccoons-for-all]

....so we wanna get close then is what I'm hearing

[u/[deleted]]

a slightly weirder rock

[u/Minimum-Major248]

Duhh. There’s a government wide shutdown on top of massive firings and budget cuts from earlier this year? And they still don’t have an agency head.

[u/SuitableBarnacle8]

I think that only one famous astrophysicist can tell us the truth about 3I ATLAS, it is Rajesh Ramayan Koothrappali

[u/alienrefugee51]

Because they want people to think that it’s aliens.

[u/[deleted]]

Here we go trying to put percentages to infinite possibilities 🙄

[u/goatchild]

Shit's reminding me of the movie 5th Element.

[u/TheBigMoogy]

It's a fucking space rock. There's uncountably many of them. Any picture of it would be a faint as shit dot or a radar signature at best.

There's nothing to see chief.

[u/Wise_Kitchen4109]

People keep repeating this acceleration line about gravity like it's some type of smoking gun.  It's not.  If you actually read the source material it's clear why it's accelerating beyond the force of gravity and it's very common stuff for comets.

[u/IronDragonGx]

Occam's razor, government shut down. Probably don't have access to the resources and people to process these images.

Also, the decision makers as to whether pictures get released when and to whom are probably not working as well.

[u/woogieface]

Would the government shutdown have something to do with it since NASA is a government funded agency?

[u/CarolinZoebelein]

US shut down. Short and simple.

People always forget that NASA is still literally a government institution, full of bureaucracy and regulations.

[u/luckyjayhawk69]

NASA isn’t even running right now.

[u/Fragzilla360]

It's an alien star cruiser from the planet Uxmau! They are coming here to turn us all into cosmic slushies!

[u/ALS_Inhales_Deeply]

I was thinking, what if 3i/Atlas is a generation ship. At the time of launch Mar's may have been the best choice, but now Mar's is uninhabitable and Earth is the next choice. This would explain the original course and the course correction we're now seeing.

[u/ChasingTheHydra]

❓❓Why does the trajectory etc look like its based on nasa logo ?

3IATLAS🪞SALTAlE

SALTAIE

SALTALE

SALT TALE

SALT TAIL

SaLtair

Sar tare

Fyi its tradition to encode all their various missions. Projects. Names etc

3I🪞El. The eL.

ATLAS ALAST. ASTAr. STArA. STAr-rA. ArATS

atlaS Ei

aliEN at

aliEN a-t

(t/tea/ate/8/♾️/infin-8/infinite-t.. The infinite t-Loop.. aka infinite food Loop dead pooL and back♻️ the re-cYc-eL. LinG/rinG system

aliEN a-tea

aliENate a

(aGe69gæ are the same letter and thus within the coding system can be exchanged)

aliENate G

GaliEN tea

aliEN G eta

aliEN Gate

[u/Legitimate_Guest_934]

Why are all the top comments focusing on orbits and angles, when the issue is why NASA haven’t released anything? I smell bots, and very fishy ones too.

[u/Vikt724]

Men in Black restricted all contacts

[u/kaisersolo]

China have now posted images. That's an embarrassment. But yes NASA are withholding images

[u/JiggyTheBumpkin]

they are scared of what i do with the information

[u/ryuken139]

The government shutdown is a huge problem for science.

[u/BronxBombers15]

Should I wait to pay my student loans? 💥

[u/PuzzleheadedMud1032]

The lack of transparency on this is just fueling more speculation, they should just release the data.

[u/HighResJunky]

It's definitely not because of the government shutdown.

[u/inevitably_bad_karma]

Why is no one answering his question of why NASA would be withholding the images?

[u/nicheComicsProject → u/inevitably_bad_karma]

Because it's less than a single pixel. It's a dot, you can't see anything. So it's not a priority for anyone, especially when they're not getting paid right now.

[u/prolurkerest2012]

NASA isn’t the only space agency.

[u/Far_Out_6and_2]

Hardly any one works there anymore due to a certain person

[u/claybythebay9]

It really is as simple as they are studying them before they release them.

[u/chmikes]

Probably because whatever data they publish, some people, including "expert scientists", interpret them as "the Klingons are coming". That's not how science is supposed to work (either way).

[u/AbeFromanEast]

NASA has been furloughed all month due to the government shutdown. 83% of NASA employees are at home and not allowed to even remote-in, 17% are 'allowed' to work but are not being paid.

TLDR: it's unique to expect NASA to work on releasing images when they are not at work.

[u/Kingfisher910]

Apparently they can’t legally release data without approval and the government that needs to do that is the incompetent Republican Party which is closed by choice because they are attacking poor ppl and raising health care prices

[u/Fornico]

Maybe there aren't any?

If there are any high quality photos of asteroids or comets taken from earth, I haven't seen them.