New extraordinary images of the interstellar object flying through our solar system have been released after its close pass by Mars.
Although most scientists have concluded that the mysterious object is comet, NASA’s Perseverance rover on the Martian surface sent back photos showing what appears to be a massive cylindrical shape.
Stargazers on social media revealed color-enhanced images of object, dubbed 3I/ATLAS, which showed the interstellar visitor appeared to also have a green glow as it passed Mars and heads closer to the sun.
Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who has been convinced that the object could be an extraterrestrial craft or probe, revealed he was already asked to examine the new images by Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna.
According to his initial study of the brand new images, Loeb was not convinced 3I/ATLAS is actually a massive cylindrical object, noting that the strange shape might been a trick of the rover’s camera stretching out its shape.
‘The stripe in the Navcam image must have resulted from stacking hundreds of Navcam images over a total time interval of about 10 minutes,’ Loeb said in a statement Sunday.
The professor added that 3I/ATLAS is likely smaller and rounder, but still massive, with a potentially diameter of more than 28 miles across.
Biophysicist and researcher Dr Horace Drew noted on social media that the mysterious green glow seen in some images could be a result of the object being a interstellar spacecraft coated in nickel.
The Perseverance rover on Mars captured new images of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS as it passed by the planet this weekend
Color-enhanced images shared by mobile social media users revealed a strange green glow around 3I/ATLAS
Dr Drew explained that humans use the same practice on Earth-made space technology on a much smaller scale.
‘It is not a “comet”,’ Drew declared on a post on X Monday morning.
Drew disagreed with Loeb’s conclusion that the cylindrical shape was a result of the Mars rover sending back a stretched image over several minutes, claiming that an amateur astronomer on Earth captured a similar shape with their telescope.
‘We can see an extended white shape, with a green coma outside. Not a small white ball,’ Drew explained in a post about the astronomer’s photograph.
Drew, who earned his PhD in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, added that previous images of the interstellar object were allegedly from a ‘head-on view’ and didn’t capture its shape from the side, like the new photos from Mars.
Loeb said he’s excited about another image taken by a different Mars camera, called HiRISE, which has better resolution and could show 3I/ATLAS more clearly.
That image is being sent back to Earth by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and has yet to be released by NASA.
Loeb has previously theorized that 3I/ATLAS could a second craft sent by an extraterrestrial intelligence, following the strange cylindrical object known as Oumuamua which passed Earth in 2017.
3I/ATLAS came within 18 million miles of Mars on October 3. Two space probes from Earth have been observing it for a week
Dr Horace Drew said an amateur astronomer’s photo of the 3I/ATLAS (bottom 3 images) prove the object has a cylindrical shape and is not a comet
