Key Findings
- The latest filtered image exposes structures invisible to the unaided eye.
- The jets emerge in coherent waves, aligned with forces no simple sublimation model can fully explain.
- And each new frame tightens the scientific questions surrounding this interstellar visitor.
A November 19 capture exposes features that demand forensic scrutiny—and a closer look at what is truly driving 3I/ATLAS’s evolving behavior.
By Samuel Lopez | USA Herald – The image above, captured on November 19 by Pau Montplet using a C6 telescope at f/7, is not just another photograph of 3I/ATLAS—it is a forensic dataset. When subjected to a Larson–Sekanina filter and displayed in negative, the comet’s morphology transforms into a map of stresses, jets, and structural activity radiating from what researchers now call the “false nucleus.”
In the filtered field, multiple arrows mark wavelike modulations in the jets, while the brightest axis of the anti-tail points directly toward the subsolar direction. Forensic image analysis makes it immediately clear that the comet is not shedding material uniformly. Instead, it is releasing it in discrete, directional pulses—behavior indicative of pressure-driven events rather than purely thermal sublimation.
I reviewed this image pixel by pixel, focusing on the radial symmetry, angular jet spacing, and the repeated sinusoidal pattern embedded within the wavy structures. These features correspond precisely to what a recent study’s authors describe: localized outgassing events driven by chemical activation inside a pristine interstellar body. The cited passage from the paper provides a critical clue. The detection of nickel absorption lines—unusually strong and anomalously abundant for a comet—suggests that Fischer–Tropsch reactions between water and Ni-bearing minerals may be ongoing inside the nucleus.
Chemical simulations referenced in the study show water molecules binding preferentially to nickel rather than iron, triggering volatile production and localized heat. From a forensic standpoint, the filtered jets visually corroborate the chemical processes the authors propose.
Natural comet physics expects sublimation to create broad, diffuse activity, not tightly wound jets or modulated wave fronts. Yet the Larson–Sekanina filter reveals jets emerging with structural rigidity, almost like rotating plumes. These patterns have appeared before in other 3I/ATLAS imagery—straight axial jets, spiral features, and an anomalous anti-tail pointing sunward. The November 19 image intensifies that pattern. The false nucleus is offset, the jets appear layered, and the wave structures imply rotational periodicity. None of these behaviors violate physics, but all of them extend beyond the standard sublimation model typically applied to long-period or dynamically new comets from our own Oort Cloud.
Avi Loeb’s framework provides an additional lens: when multiple independent anomalies appear across observations, one must evaluate the object by its full evidentiary record, not by analogy to familiar comets.
The November 19 jets and their coherence indicates a forceful release, but their scale and periodicity show no evidence of sustained internal oceans or long-term geothermal reservoirs. They match neither Enceladus-like cryovolcanism nor ordinary sublimation. Instead, they occupy an intermediate explanatory space that scientist term “localized cryovulcanism”—a metaphor for chemically induced venting rather than a literal geological process.
Examining the image from a legal-forensic perspective strengthens this conclusion. The arrows marking wavy structures are not interpretive; they are empirical. The anti-tail—pointing directly toward the Sun—indicates dust grains moving along a gravitational and radiative axis inconsistent with a symmetric coma. The false nucleus suggests that what appears to be the brightest point is not the true solid nucleus, but a dense region of dust illuminated by internal activity. The filtered negative reveals radial lines that terminate in node points—likely gas-rich venting locations. These are not artifacts of processing; they are angularly consistent with repeated behavior observed in earlier images from other observatories. When evidence repeats across instruments, geographic locations, and filtering techniques, the probability of artifact decreases, and the probability of genuine physical structure increases.
This image, taken together with the chemical findings in the study, illustrates a comet that is not passive. It is reactive. It is responding dynamically to solar heating, internal chemistry, and structural stresses accumulated over a billion-year interstellar journey. It is neither the cryovolcanic world some headlines now suggest nor the inert snowball many expected. It is a chemically active interstellar body displaying venting behaviors we do not fully understand—but which are now documented with increasing clarity and consistency.
As 3I/ATLAS approaches its December 19 close pass, every new frame sharpens the profile of an object unlike any comet previously studied. Whether its jets are the result of chemical activation, structural fracture, rotational torque, or an interplay of all three, the evidence now shows a pattern. It is that pattern—not speculation—that will shape the next phase of scientific investigation.
We will continue monitoring every frame as new data emerges.
