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False-color brightness map of 3I/ATLAS on January 14, 2026 in six 170 second exposures by the WFC3 UVIS (F350LP) camera of the Hubble Space Telescope (top image, spanning 130,000 kilometers on a side). The map was processed through a Larson-Sekanina Rotational Gradient filter, which removes the circularly symmetric glow around the nucleus (bottom image), showing four jets. The jet structure includes a prominent anti-tail, directed at the Sun towards the lower left, along with a system of three mini-jets. These mini-jets are equally separated by an angle of 120 degrees from each other, but none of them is pointing away from the Sun as expected for a standard cometary tail. (Image credit: Toni Scarmato, based on data released by NASA/ESA/STScI here)

A new set of six images, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on January 14, 2026, show the brightness map of the glowing halo surrounding 3I/ATLAS after perihelion. The glow extends beyond 130,000 kilometers towards the Sun, about a third of the Earth-Moon separation.

When the image is processed through the Larson-Sekanina Rotational Gradient filter which removes the circularly symmetric glow around the nucleus, it features a weird configuration of jets, including a prominent anti-tail outflow directed towards the Sun, supplemented by a system of three mini-jets. These mini-jets are equally separated by an angle of 120 degrees from each other, and none of them is pointing away from the Sun as expected for a standard cometary tail.

The last Hubble exposure ends half an hour after the first exposure starts. A new paper that I co-authored with Toni Scarmato (accessible here) analyzed previous Hubble images from December 2025 and concluded that the jet structure wobbles periodically by +/-20 degrees over a period of 7.1 hours. This implies a modest shift by 5.6 degrees over 0.5 hours in the orientation of the jet system on January 14, 2026.

On January 22, 2026, the Earth will be aligned to within 0.69 degrees with the line connecting 3I/ATLAS to the Sun (as reported in the new paper I co-authored with Mauro Barbieri here). Just as in the context of a full Moon, this rare alignment will allow us to see 3I/ATLAS and the glowing dust around it in full brightness when the area of their reflecting surfaces will be maximized. Since we will be observing 3I/ATLAS from the direction of the Sun on that date, its sunward anti-tail will be pointed at us.

Measurements of the brightness surge and polarization of 3I/ATLAS at opposition to the Sun could shed new light on the composition and size of the fragments it launches into the anti-tail.

What is the nature of the anti-tail that allows it to penetrate hundreds of thousands of kilometers through the Solar wind and radiation without being deflected away from the Sun, as often the case in familiar cometary tails? Is the anti-tail composed of fragments of ice (as suggested in a paper I co-authored with Eric Keto, published here), large dust grains (as I suggested in a research note, posted here), or massive objects (as I suggested in a paper, published here)?

Data from the SPHEREx space observatory indicated the existence of icy fragments around 3I/ATLAS before perihelion (as reported here in August 2025). However, the spectral signature of ice disappeared in the SPHEREx data after perihelion, taken during December 2025 (as reported here), when abundant organic molecules in gas phase, such as CH3OH, H2CO, CH4, and C2H6, were discovered, along with an enhancement by a factor of ~20 in the water production rate. To survive cosmic-ray bombardment along an interstellar journey that lasted billions of years, these organic molecules must have been buried under a thick layer of material, at least 10-meters in depth.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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(Image Credit: Chris Michel, National Academy of Sciences, 2023)

Avi Loeb is the head of the Galileo Project, founding director of Harvard University’s — Black Hole Initiative, director of the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the former chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University (2011–2020). He is a former member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and a former chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. He is the bestselling author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth” and a co-author of the textbook “Life in the Cosmos”, both published in 2021. The paperback edition of his new book, titled “Interstellar”, was published in August 2024.

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