New observations from the Nordic Optical Telescope, in the Canary Islands, Spain, suggest that 3I/ATLAS's unusual anti-solar tail has changed direction, becoming dominated by a tail that faces away from the Sun. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

On July 1, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) spotted an object speeding through the Solar System on an escape trajectory. It was soon found to be an interstellar visitor – the third we have caught so far after 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov.

Since then, astronomers have been tracking 3I/ATLAS and have found a number of unusual features of the comet, which may be a 10-billion-year-old time capsule from an earlier age of the universe .

One u

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