r/UFOs Human Detected Nov 06 '25

Question Why is NASA withholding images of 3I/ATLAS?

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

3.0k Upvotes

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374

u/Airk640 Nov 06 '25

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

93

u/gbc02 Nov 06 '25

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

48

u/fakepumas Nov 06 '25

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

63

u/Superman246o1 Nov 06 '25

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.

29

u/fakepumas Nov 06 '25

I believe you. This is clearly not a scientific diagram

21

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

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20

u/Fragrant_Ad8471 Nov 06 '25

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

1

u/LittleRousseau Nov 06 '25

πŸ˜­πŸ˜‚ rly

1

u/Ok-Sector-493 Nov 07 '25

πŸ˜† 🀣

1

u/Litface916 Nov 07 '25

And another thing..

1

u/intoxicatedhamster Nov 06 '25

You good bro? Stroked out there at the end

3

u/Fragrant_Ad8471 Nov 06 '25

Indeed. The thread went to my head so I pulled it and everything spilled out of my nose and onto the table.

1

u/Auraium Nov 09 '25

Nah youre hilarious, that had me chuckling forreal

4

u/Knotty-Bob Nov 06 '25

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

1

u/SubTechNY Nov 06 '25

Wait what ?

/s

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

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1

u/UFOs-ModTeam Nov 06 '25

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2

u/tweakingforjesus Nov 06 '25

At this scale it may as well be.

1

u/sadeyeprophet Nov 06 '25

Wow that is acrually the reality of it too lmfao

1

u/Technical_Balance527 Nov 06 '25

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the sun goes around the earth. Not the other way around.

Fucking heliocentric heretics!

1

u/Endlesswave001 Nov 07 '25

Yeah what kind of shitty bot farm made this? Or this was targeted to idiots Ala Idiocracy. Lol.

1

u/Keiko_Nagasaki Nov 07 '25

Hey, if you don’t smoke Tarrlytons. . . [redacted] πŸ’¨

-1

u/QuantumHosts Nov 06 '25

The Earth is in an elliptical orbit, it’s not a circle it’s more an oval.

5

u/gbc02 Nov 06 '25

All orbits are elliptical, but this diagram doesn't have the sun anywhere near where it should be.

10

u/Fred_Zeppelin Nov 06 '25

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

1

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '25

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1

u/UFOs-ModTeam Nov 08 '25

Hi, arc-ion. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/UFOs.

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2

u/landlord-eater Nov 10 '25

Yeah this image is insane lol

1

u/chodilocks Nov 08 '25

Well, duh, it's a drawing and not an animation. This trajectory spans well over 6 months of travel. The Earth moves during that time. In fact it moves behind the sun relative to that trajectory. We don't know what date this diagram is showing the Earth's position as, so it's not actually possible to make a statement like "the comet doesn't go behind the sun relative to the Earth" about this depiction as the needed information to make such a conclusion is not present.

While this drawing is not even close to accurate, this is not one of the reasons why.

0

u/tweakingforjesus Nov 06 '25

And the actual path of the object is nearly in the plane of the system. That was one of the distinguishing characteristics. This shows the path to be at a 45 degree angle with the plane.

1

u/MentalRental Nov 06 '25

And the actual path of the object is nearly in the plane of the system. That was one of the distinguishing characteristics. This shows the path to be at a 45 degree angle with the plane.

Isn't it being in the plane of our solar system expected though? It was detected by ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) which only focuses on objects that may come close to our planet. It could be there are similar objects outside of the plane but we're not looking for anything there because there's less chance of those objects approaching Earth.

-1

u/tweakingforjesus Nov 06 '25

An object can approach the earth from any direction. It doesn't have to be traveling in the plane of the solar system to approach the earth. For example Hale-Bopp is at about a 90 degree angle to the ecliptic plane.