{"id":229258,"date":"2026-01-18T10:32:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T16:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/spherex-images-and-a-new-anomaly-regarding-the-gas-plume-around-3i-atlas-after-perihelion"},"modified":"2026-01-18T10:32:57","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T16:32:57","slug":"spherex-images-and-a-new-anomaly-regarding-the-gas-plume-around-3i-atlas-after-perihelion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/spherex-images-and-a-new-anomaly-regarding-the-gas-plume-around-3i-atlas-after-perihelion","title":{"rendered":"SPHEREx Images and a New Anomaly Regarding the Gas Plume Around 3I\/ATLAS After Perihelion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/spherex-images-and-a-new-anomaly-regarding-the-gas-plume-around-3i-atlas-after-perihelion2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new paper led by Carey Lisse (accessible <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/2601.06759\" rel=\"noopener ugc nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>) reports large-scale images of the gas plume around the interstellar object <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/3I\/ATLAS\" rel=\"noopener ugc nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">3I\/ATLAS<\/a> after perihelion, based on data collected last month by the SPHEREx space observatory. The data show enhanced mass loss of dust and gas around 3I\/ATLAS.<\/p>\n<p>The new images of 3I\/ATLAS were taken in the wavelength range of 0.75\u20135.0 microns between the 8 and 15 of December, 2025. Each image spans 30,000 kilometers on a side. On these large scales, the brightness maps of <strong class=\"\">dust and organics<\/strong> were found to be pear-shaped, with an anti-tail elongation in the direction of the Sun. All six other gas plumes were found to be nearly round. The major gas species were identified as: cyanide (CN, at a wavelength of 0.93 microns), water (H2O, in the wavelength range of 2.7\u20132.8 microns), Organics (C-H, between 3.2\u20133.6 microns), carbon-dioxide (CO2, 4.2\u20134.3 microns), and carbon-monoxide (CO, 4.7\u20134.8 microns). The CO2 gas-plume continues to extend out to a few hundreds of thousands of kilometers. The dust spectrum can be described as the sum of scattered sunlight and thermal emission.<\/p>\n<p>Most notably, the signature of sub-micron dust particles that would have enhanced the blue color via Rayleigh scattering are absent. Moreover, these small particles would have also been subjected to a strong solar radiation-pressure and would have formed the standard cometary tail, extending away from the Sun \u2014 which is not observed \u2014 as I argued in an essay, posted <a class=\"\" rel=\"noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/avi-loeb.medium.com\/3i-atlas-sheds-particles-that-are-much-bigger-than-common-sunlight-scattering-dust-703cc2220df0\" data-discover=\"true\">here<\/a> on December 25, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new paper led by Carey Lisse (accessible here) reports large-scale images of the gas plume around the interstellar object 3I\/ATLAS after perihelion, based on data collected last month by the SPHEREx space observatory. The data show enhanced mass loss of dust and gas around 3I\/ATLAS. The new images of 3I\/ATLAS were taken in the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1965,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mapping","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}