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In early July 2025, astronomers announced comet 3I/ATLAS, first observed on July 1 by a Chilean telescope in NASA’s ATLAS network, is an interstellar visitor with a hyperbolic orbit. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) imaged the comet on July 3 with its FORS2 camera, capturing the clearest views yet. These observations confirm 3I/ATLAS as the third interstellar object detected in our solar system (after 1I/’Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019). The comet is now headed inward toward the Sun and will make its closest Earth approach in late October 2025.

High-Definition Telescope Imaging

According to NASA, upon discovery on July 1, 2025, by the NASA-funded ATLAS telescope, 3I/ATLAS was quickly identified as interstellar due to its highly eccentric, hyperbolic orbit. At the time of the VLT observations on July 3, the comet was about 670 million kilometers from the Sun, moving inward toward Earth. In the resulting VLT frames the comet appears as a small, fuzzy white patch with a faint tail; an ESO caption describes the image as showing a “white smudge” against the black sky.
ESO notes that the stacked image was created by digitally removing background stars, isolating a ‘deep image’ of the comet. This confirms 3I/ATLAS is active (with a visible coma of gas and dust), so astronomers classify it as a comet rather than a bare asteroid. The timelapse video from FORS2 makes the motion of 3I/ATLAS clear: over 13 minutes the comet drifts relative to the starry background.

Significance and Future Observations

Orbit models show 3I/ATLAS will pass closest to Earth in late October 2025. At that time, it will lie near the Sun and be unobservable to ground-based telescopes. It is expected to reappear in early December 2025. Astronomers hope that studying 3I/ATLAS will reveal clues to its composition, structure and origin. ESO’s VLT and other telescopes will continue observing the comet as long as it remains accessible. These observations will help scientists compare 3I/ATLAS to ‘Oumuamua and Borisov, improving understanding of these objects’ origins and make-up.

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Hubble Uncovers Multi-Age Stars in Ancient Cluster, Reshaping Galaxy Origins

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July 19, 2025

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Hubble Uncovers Multi-Age Stars in Ancient Cluster, Reshaping Galaxy Origins

Astronomers call ancient star clusters like NGC 1786 “time capsules” for their galaxy, preserving some of its oldest stars. A new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope offers an unprecedented close-up of this dense cluster 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Hubble’s data show that NGC 1786 contains stars of different ages – a surprising find, since such clusters were once thought to hold a single stellar generation. This multi-age discovery is reshaping our view of how galaxies built their first stars, and suggests more complex early history.

Mixed-Age Stars in a Galactic Time Capsule

According to the official source, this Hubble image shows the globular cluster NGC 1786, a ball of densely packed stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years from Earth. Astronomers captured this picture as part of a program comparing ancient clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies (like the LMC) with clusters in our own Milky Way. The surprising discovery is that NGC 1786 hosts stars of multiple ages. In fact, astronomers expected all stars in such a cluster to form at the same time, so finding multiple stellar generations was unexpected. This suggests even ancient clusters in other galaxies have more complex, layered histories than scientists expected.

Clues to Galaxy Evolution

For astronomers, the discovery provides clues to galaxy formation. Each globular cluster is like a snapshot of its galaxy’s past, so finding multiple stellar generations implies the Large Magellanic Cloud built its stars in stages rather than all at once. By comparing NGC 1786 to clusters in the Milky Way, researchers can retrace how both galaxies assembled their oldest stars. As one NASA scientist notes, this study “can tell us more not only about how the LMC was originally formed, but the Milky Way Galaxy, too”. Overall, the discovery supports a picture of gradual galactic growth through multiple waves of star formation and mergers, rather than a single early burst.

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sPHENIX at RHIC Delivers First Results, Sets Stage for Quark–Gluon Plasma Studies

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July 19, 2025

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sPHENIX at RHIC Delivers First Results, Sets Stage for Quark–Gluon Plasma Studies

Brookhaven’s sPHENIX detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has reported its first physics measurements of gold-ion collisions. Designed for heavy-ion experiments, sPHENIX recorded precision counts of thousands of charged particles and their energies from head-on gold–gold impacts. These early results confirm the detector’s performance and pave the way for its main mission: exploring the quark–gluon plasma (QGP), the hot, dense state of matter thought to have filled the universe microseconds after the Big Bang. By verifying basic collision properties, the experiment lays the foundation for deeper QGP studies.

Probing the Quark–Gluon Plasma

According to two papers, the quark–gluon plasma is an exotic state of matter made of free quarks and gluons that existed microseconds after the Big Bang. Colliding heavy nuclei at RHIC (200 GeV per nucleon) creates a tiny fireball where nuclear matter “melts” into this plasma. sPHENIX was built to probe these extreme conditions. It is essentially an upgrade of Brookhaven’s earlier PHENIX detector.

sPHENIX found that head-on (central) Au+Au collisions produce about ten times more charged particles and energy than glancing (peripheral) collisions. This matches earlier RHIC results and confirms the detector is performing as designed. With this baseline established, researchers will pursue the QGP’s rarest probes – fully reconstructed jets – to study how quarks and gluons lose energy in the plasma.

Implications and Next Steps

RHIC’s final 2025 run of gold-ion collisions will exploit every detector’s capabilities. At the same time, CERN’s LHC collides lead nuclei at much higher energy, and its ALICE/ATLAS/CMS experiments have observed similar QGP effects like jet quenching. The two colliders probe complementary regimes, so sPHENIX’s precise RHIC measurements will enrich the global picture of the plasma.

Next, sPHENIX will treat energetic jets as a microscope on the QGP. By comparing energy loss in heavy-quark vs. light-quark jets, scientists can test whether the plasma is a smooth fluid or contains clumps. As one co-spokesperson notes, the first measurements “establish the basis” for sPHENIX’s QGP program and herald “the start of a very exciting chapter” of discovery.

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Chandra Spots Distant Baby Planet Losing Its Atmosphere Under Intense X-ray Assault

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July 19, 2025

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Chandra Spots Distant Baby Planet Losing Its Atmosphere Under Intense X-ray Assault

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered a Jupiter-sized exoplanet that is being fried by the radiation from its parent star. The study determined that the star plan is getting extended so fast that it must be evaporating, losing more than 10 times the mass of Jupiter every billion years. This baby world is only 8 million years old, located some 330 light-years from Earth, and orbits perilously close to its host star, at a distance of 8.2 million miles. The powerful X-rays it is bombarded with are slowly blowing away the planet’s atmosphere, and it’s at risk of being stripped bare and turned into a rocky core in a billion years or so.

X-ray Radiation From Host Star Is Rapidly Stripping Baby Exoplanet TOI 1227 b’s Atmosphere

As per a NASA statement, the planet’s mass—roughly 17 times that of Earth—is not enough to resist the high-energy onslaught from its parent star, which, despite being cooler and less massive than our Sun, emits stronger X-rays. By analysing Chandra observations alongside computer models, Attila Varga of the Rochester Institute of Technology and colleagues concluded that the exoplanet sheds the equivalent of Earth’s atmosphere every 200 years or so. “It’s almost incomprehensible what’s happening to this planet,” Varga stated.

X-rays are vital for the study of the evolution of planets in systems far away from our own, say co-authors Joel Kastner. The radiation not only heats TOI 1227 b’s atmosphere but also inflates it, making it more vulnerable to escape. Over time, this process will cause the planet to lose more than 10% of its mass, equal to two Earths. “The future for this baby planet doesn’t look great,” mentioned Alexander Binks of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

To determine the planet’s age, researchers analysed the motion of its host star relative to other populations of stars and then used models of its brightness. TOI 1227 b is a rare object among planets with an age less than 50 million years since it is hosted by a low-mass star and has a long orbital period of 28 days. But the planet is already past its expiration date.

The team’s findings, which shed light on the impact of high-energy environments on young planets, have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and are available in preprint on arXiv.

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