What is 3I/ATLAS? The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind.

 

How many times must I image 3I/ATLAS before I prove that it hasn't changed its course? How many times must NASA release the results of their data on 3I/ATLAS before people believe it's a natural object?

Yes, Bob Dylan said it best: "The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind."

The greatest irony of 3I/ATLAS is that it is speeding out of the solar system faster than any known object, yet people refuse to let it go! Everybody wants to believe that it's aliens who might just turn their ship around. The news media keeps teasing us about the possibility that 3I/ATLAS is going to launch its probes at earth.

In a previous post, I offered some updates on 3I/ATLAS. My primary goal was to prove wrong the newspaper headline of December 27th announcing that 3I/ATLAS had changed course and was now following an unpredictable path. I've been shooting 3I/ATLAS every night, and it's still landing dead center in my camera's field of view, despite using an old ephemeris that I downloaded back in October of 2025.

And believe me, 3I/ATLAS is moving very fast! My picture above (actually two pictures stitched together) shows its positions on the consecutive nights of January 19th and 20th. It moved by nearly a degree across the sky in 24 hours! 

So, if 3I/ATLAS were truly following an unpredictable path, it would be lost very quickly! I'd have to be scouring a 2-degree radius of sky each night to keep up with it. But such is not the case. The path of 3I/ATLAS that was predicted 2 months prior to the "change in course" headline, is still spot on.

The above screen capture from Cartes du Ciel, the planetarium software I use to control my telescope pointing, shows the path of 3I/ATLAS between now and June. Note the star 25 Cancri just to the left of the January 21st position on the chart. That star is annotated in my image at the top of this page. The two yellow lines, with tick marks, show the paths of 3I/ATLAS and Jupiter. As you know, 3I/ATLAS will pass very close to Jupiter on its way out of the solar system. 

But Jupiter isn't standing still. And neither is the earth! So, you'll note that on the right side of the yellow paths of Jupiter and 3I/ATLAS, both objects change from retrograde (east-to-west) motion and turn prograde (west-to-east). That reversal of direction is due to the earth's orbital motion. But I'm sure the news media will find a way to blame 3I/ATLAS's reversal to prograde motion on aliens!

Of course, if anybody wants to truly see for themselves the paths of the planets and 3I/ATLAS they can use the wonderful tool of JPL's orbital viewer on the Small Body Database Lookup website (if you follow that link, type "3i/atlas" into the search box, then click the "[show]" link beside "Orbital Viewer"). Or they can use planetarium software like Cartes du Ciel and take their own pictures with their own telescopes and cameras.

How long will it take for everyone to accept that 3I/ATLAS is nothing more than a lifeless interstellar object that's going away forever and that it doesn't care at all about us? 

"The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind. The answer is blowin' in the wind."


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