Ever since interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS whizzed into our cosmic neighborhood in July, astronomers have been racing to uncover its characteristics . Now that the powerful James Webb Space Telescope has taken a good look at this icy interloper, it seems to be weirder than anyone imagined.

A preprint submitted to the Astrophysical Journal Letters for peer review on Monday, August 25, describes the first results from JWST’s survey of 3I/ATLAS.

A team of astronomers observed the comet with the telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectroscopic (NIRSpec) instrument to measure the composition of its coma—the cloud of gas and dust that surrounds its nucleus—and determine what drives its activity. Their surprising findings bring 3I/ATLAS’s origin into clearer focus, helping astronomers retrace the come

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