New Image of 3I/ATLAS Reveals A Long, Rigid Structured Sunward-Facing Jet That’s Pointing The Wrong Way – And Staying There

Before assigning meaning, the first forensic step is to eliminate illusions. Background stars appear as short streaks due to the tracking rate of the telescope, while 3I/ATLAS remains fixed and compact, confirming the feature is intrinsic to the object and not an artifact of motion, stacking, or optical distortion. The jet-like feature emerges from the nucleus region and aligns with earlier sunward emissions seen in Hubble and Webb imagery, but here it appears unusually long relative to the size of the visible coma.

At this point, it is essential to separate what is directly observed from what is physically expected.

What is observed is a sunward-directed structure extending well beyond the luminous halo surrounding the nucleus. The coma itself, based on multiple instruments, has a characteristic radius of roughly 5,000 kilometers. This radius is not arbitrary—it is the region where gas can plausibly exist before being stripped away by the solar wind. Outside this boundary, standard models predict that gas should be gone, leaving only dust.