Astronomer Qicheng Zhang has reportedly taken new images of Comet 3I/ATLAS after it slipped behind the Sun on October 29. The images show the interstellar guest “glows green and hides a tail.”
Qicheng Zhang, a researcher at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, used the observatory’s powerful Discovery Telescope to make new observations of an interstellar comet as it moved away from the sun on Wednesday (Nov. 5), according to a report in Live Science.
The comet recently became visible again after passing the far side of our star.
Green glow
According to the report, the researcher used a filter to detect carbon diatomic (C2) particles that glow green.
He noted that the comet has a bunch of large molecules containing carbon and hydrogen (hydrocarbons).
And as the comet approaches the sun, ultraviolet (UV) light breaks up these molecules.
“It’s kind of for the same reason that if we stay in the sun too long without sunscreen, we get sunburned,” Zhang said Living science.
“UV rays destroy our DNA [in our skin cells]which is a similar type of molecule in the sense that it is large and contains carbon.’
When this happens on a comet, some chunks of molecules are two carbon atoms stuck together, or diatomic carbon, which astronomers can easily detect.
Hidden Tail 3I/ATLAS
The comet appears to be missing its dusty tail in the image, but it is still there, Living science informed.
Zhang told the media that if we look closely at the image, we can see that the left side of the comet is slightly brighter than the right side.
This slight asymmetric glow occurs because we see the tail mostly head-on, and it is directly behind the comet, curving slightly to the left.
In other words, the apparent absence of a comet’s tail is not admirable.
