NASA on Wednesday released new images of an interstellar comet, just the third visitor ever confirmed from elsewhere in the galaxy, which show the object as a bright point of light surrounded by a blurry halo of gas and dust.

In the long-awaited photos, the comet, dubbed 3I/ATLAS, mostly appears as an illuminated dot, but some images also reveal its tail as a faint, elongated smudge.

The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, circled in the center, as seen by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. This image was made by stacking a series of images taken Sept. 16 as the comet was zooming toward Mars.

NASA / Goddard / SwRI / JHU-APL

Comet 3I/ATLAS was first detected in July , sparking a flurry of interest among scientists and in amateur astronomy circles. Much of the intrigue stems from the extremely rare ch

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