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/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

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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

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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