Data from another in the line of telescopes looking at 3I/Atlas has been released and in line with the others the Very Large Telescope based in the Atacama Desert has found its own anomalies.
The luminosity of the object is still causing problems , is its brightness due it being even bigger than we thought or could it be producing its own light ? , questions I'm sure will be answered before perihelium ... or perhaps shortly after when it changes course and takes up orbit.
![[Image: Aliens.jpg?itok=kfbiuwSv]](https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/styles/ow_medium_feature/s3/field/field_image_main/Aliens.jpg?itok=kfbiuwSv)
Quote:A new paper on spectroscopic data from the Very Large Telescope (accessible here) reported the surprising detection of nickel without iron in the plume of gas around 3I/ATLAS. Nickel without iron is a signature of industrial production of nickel alloys. This data constitutes a new anomaly of 3I/ATLAS. Natural comets generically show iron and nickel simultaneously, as both elements are produced together in the ejecta of supernova explosions.
Is this anomaly another clue for a possible technological origin of 3I/ATLAS? The paper suggests chemical formation through the nickel carbonyl channel which is an extremely rare and exotic possibility in comets, whereas it is a standard technology for industrial nickel refining.
The inferred mass loss rate of nickel for 3I/ATLAS is about 5 grams per second at a heliocentric distance of 2.8 times the Earth-Sun separation (AU). It exhibits a dramatic rise with decreasing distance from the sun, with a power-law index of -8.43 (+/-0.79).
The spectroscopic data on the plume surrounding 3I/ATLAS also reveals cyanide (CN), with a mass loss rate of about 20 grams per second at 2.85 AU and an even steeper dependence on heliocentric distance to the power of -9.38 (+/-1.2).
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/a-steeply-ri...6e20674303
The luminosity of the object is still causing problems , is its brightness due it being even bigger than we thought or could it be producing its own light ? , questions I'm sure will be answered before perihelium ... or perhaps shortly after when it changes course and takes up orbit.