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Methane emerges from interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as it exits the solar system
- April 16, 2026 at 11:40 PM
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Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is now on its way out of our solar system, never to return. The comet was only the third-ever detected object to originate from outside our solar system. Traveling at high speeds, it looped around the sun within 1.5 AU (one AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance between Earth and the sun) in October 2025; as of April, it is now past the orbit of Jupiter on its way out of the solar system.
Originally published at Phys.org