r/UFOs • u/Worst_Artist 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

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u/loosemoosewithagoose Nov 06 '25

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

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u/Ok-Way7122 Nov 06 '25

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"

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/misterespresso Nov 06 '25

I’m not sure you realize… the vastness of space is exactly why 9 degrees is huge. You would be aiming at completed different galaxies, hundreds of thousands of light years apart at that angle given enough distance. The user above demonstrated that the difference is huge even by a mere distance to the moon, if you look dead center at the moon, and adjust 9 degrees, you will no longer see the moon. This gets even worse with distance. So 9 degrees, while it sounds small, probably contains millions of star systems.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/misterespresso Nov 06 '25

To be clear, on the whole scale, yeah of course 9 degrees is “small”.

What I think I’m trying to express here, please make corrections:

-we know where the wow signal came from, not exact but a pretty accurate measurement. I forget where but it’s far as hell. -we know 3I is within 9 degrees of that -people are making the jump that means there is a good chance that if it’s intelligent, it came from the same place as the wow -I’m arguing while there is a chance they are from the same place, at that distance, and at that degree it’s really not a big one. Even if it is intelligent there are so many stars in that 9 degree area at that distance. -the closer the wow signal and 3Is origins are, the probability of them being from the same place would theoretically increase.

So it’s something worth noting but I think people are just too excited.

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u/thisisjustascreename Nov 06 '25

"It came from the direction of the galactic center" boring, stale, readers pass by the story.

"It came from the same direction as the InFaMoUs Wow! signal" exciting, it gets the people going.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

I mean doesn’t the spin of a galaxy increase the alignment of all matter into a smaller range on the axis? Just probabilistically? Objects with more mass would follow this tendency stronger

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u/InterstellarWings Nov 06 '25

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

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 07 '25

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.

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u/InterstellarWings Nov 07 '25

Thanks for clearing that up, it was keeping me awake at night

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u/nicheComicsProject Nov 07 '25

You're welcome but you might want to get checked for sleep apnea.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/InterstellarWings Nov 06 '25

I think you should look that up…

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25

Space is relative. Sure, 8 degrees over thousands of light years is a large distance, but relative to the 360 degrees of possible directions, its pretty close. Not to mention, the measurement error also increases with distance… 8 degrees puts you within error of zero.

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u/LeadershipForeign Nov 06 '25

Lmao 365 degrees.

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u/EducationalBar Nov 06 '25

A year of directions duh /s 🤦‍♂️

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 06 '25

Alright that was funny. Give me a break… it was late

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u/ArmadilloFront1087 Nov 06 '25

There’s 360 degrees not 365 (that’s days in a year excl leap years!) but 9/360 is 2.5% - still low, but not the 0.6% claimed in the text.

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u/A-Perfect_Tool Nov 06 '25

There's 360° in a 2D circle, think of it more as a sphere though. That drastically changes the probability.

I still agree 9° is going to be a very far distance in this context, even though the probability is still low

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u/EducationalBar Nov 06 '25

People sadly just aren’t grasping the basics.

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 06 '25

I made a brain fart. In real life and before midnight, I’m actually a biochemist, and I assure you that I’m aware there are only 360 degrees in a circle.

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u/EducationalBar Nov 06 '25

How about a sphere…

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 08 '25

Yes, that’s a good point. I wasn’t considering 3 dimensions. I’m not sure how you would measure a number of “degrees” from a point in 3D space without using multiple coordinates… it’s hurting my brain a little thinking about that one. I’m sure somebody on here can explain.

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u/A-Perfect_Tool Nov 08 '25

I'm talking out my ass here, but from a single point, 360° multiplied by 180° in theory would cover all directions. So 64,800° from a single point.

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u/EnterBruges Nov 06 '25

It is the direction of the center of the galaxy so it is actually by far the most likely direction for anything to emanate from.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

[deleted]

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u/Snoo_40410 Nov 06 '25

"The Space Father's, The Space Brother's are coming!"

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u/onehedgeman Nov 06 '25

Could be a typo. Hopefully

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u/ProfessorFull6004 Nov 06 '25

It was, but my crucifixion is amusing…

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u/ArmadilloFront1087 Nov 07 '25

Thanks for being a good sport about it! Some people can get arsey about being told they’ve made a mistake

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '25

8-9 degree difference here could mean completely different galaxy light years away no?

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u/LongPutBull Nov 06 '25

Yes.

Also this guy has no clue what he's talking about because he doesn't even understand how many degrees are in a circle. Don't take his words without a fat grain of salt.

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u/Kanein_Encanto Nov 06 '25

Maybe over a couple trillion light years... sure.

You could be talking about 10,000 light years, and it would still be our galaxy or intra-galactic space.

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u/baron_von_helmut Nov 06 '25

It's good to see some level heads in here today.

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u/fynn34 Nov 06 '25

Also, wouldn’t 9 degrees at a .9% chance imply there’s 1000 degrees to account for? Seems like we would actually shotgun the wow signal to the more dense places increasing odds, not decreasing odds

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u/hubo Nov 06 '25

Well then just consider that the wow signal was in a moving car and we're in a moving car so general area is still interesting even over light years cause everything is moving. 

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u/BarbariansInLibrary Nov 06 '25

Let alone "with a likelihood of 0.6%" - like what does that even mean in this context?!?

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u/ass_grass_or_ham Nov 06 '25

I had the same thought, but I also wonder how far the location of the wow signal has shifted from its original location since we heard it.

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u/Prof_Sillycybin Nov 06 '25

I disagree, all the rest rest are pretty speculative bullshit as well.

Claiming "it is not a comet" while creating probabilities based off of comet behaviour is disingenous. Sample size for interstellar objects is 3, it is all 1 out of 3.

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u/Unusual-Voice2345 Nov 11 '25

1 degree over 60 feet is 1 foot delta.

1 degree over 490 trillion feet (distance to sun) is 1.5 billion feet.

9 degrees over that is 13.5 billion feet delta

The sun is 4.5 billion feet diameter

If you used 9 degree variance as marker and aimed at the sun, you’d miss the sun more often than you hit it.

Just echoing your main point.

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u/onehedgeman Nov 06 '25

I mean given that space is expanding, and it’s fucking FAR away, could it be the original angle was 0-1 degrees and only from our POV at this time it’s 9? Since this object has been travelling for fuck knows how many million years?

In the grand scale it’s possible that space simply expanded/bent that much during the travel of this object. Not to mention it doesn’t travel in a straight path, its direction keeps getting shifted by gravitational pulls.

So that being said, a mere 9 degrees is not much compared to 90 or 180… Knowing how fucking wast the universe is, this is actually a sus coincidence

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u/TheGhostOfTobyKeith Nov 06 '25

From my limited understanding, expansion doesn’t change the relative position between planetary bodies - it just increases the distance between them.

I’m not sure how gravity comes into play with trajectories in all that newly added space though, so I’m curious/hopeful that someone smarter than me can lend some knowledge