A rotationally filtered view exposes structural order inside the noise—and narrows what this object can plausibly be doing.
This image reveals what earlier frames could not.
The activity is more organized than expected.
And the margin for misinterpretation is shrinking.
[USA HERALD] – The image now under forensic review was captured on December 19, 2025, between 23h38m and 00h21m UT by Belgian astronomer Alfons Diepvens using a 0.2-meter telescope, and processed using a Larson–Sekanina rotational gradient filter. This processing method is specifically designed to suppress smooth background light and enhance asymmetric, rotating, or collimated features—making it one of the most revealing tools available for detecting structured activity in cometary or comet-like objects.
What this image shows—more clearly than any prior observation from this viewing geometry—is that 3I/ATLAS is not merely shedding material into space. It is expressing directionally organized activity that remains coherent after rotational subtraction, a result that immediately places constraints on what mechanisms can plausibly be responsible.
