Readers can explore Loeb’s ongoing analysis at his official blog, Science and Technology: Notes from the Frontier on Medium:
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/
Why the Anti-Tail Defies Expectations
The anti-tail of 31/ATLAS is especially intriguing because it points toward the Sun rather than away from it. Under normal circumstances, solar radiation pressure and the solar wind push dust and gas outward, forming a tail that extends in the opposite direction.
“This is uncharacteristic for comets,” Loeb noted, adding that the phenomenon was not discussed during a NASA conference, despite its implications. NASA’s general background on comet behavior underscores how unusual this is:
https://science.nasa.gov/solar-system/comets/
The most recent observations show a tightly collimated anti-tail jet extending at least 400,000 kilometers toward the Sun. From its discovery, the jet was inferred to be roughly ten times longer than it is wide, with a projection angle of about 10 degrees in images analyzed from the Hubble Space Telescope:
https://hubblesite.org/
An Ancient Visitor from Another Star System
The interstellar object 31/ATLAS was first detected on July 1 and later identified as a comet originating from another stellar system. Its coma—the cloud of gas and dust surrounding its nucleus—measures approximately 24 kilometers in diameter.
