New Amateur Images of 3I/ATLAS Reveal SECRETS that NASA Can’t Explain

On October 20, 2025, amateur astronomer Carla Esta made a stunning discovery that has sent shockwaves through the scientific community.

Fresh images of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS revealed an unexpected feature: instead of the typical glowing tail associated with comets, Esta’s images captured a jet aimed directly at the sun.

This defiance of established comet behavior raises profound questions about the nature of 3I/ATLAS and what it may reveal about our solar system.

The implications of Esta’s findings are significant, especially as the comet approaches perihelion.

If these anomalies are genuine and not merely artifacts of imaging, they could challenge our understanding of cometary physics.

The next eight days leading up to perihelion could change everything we believe about celestial bodies in our solar system.

Esta’s name first surfaced in a late-night astronomy forum post timestamped October 20, 2025, at 03:16 UTC.

The attached file was not a glossy composite image but a raw FITS frame captured directly from her H-alpha solar rig.

The metadata accompanying Esta’s image confirmed its authenticity, with coordinates matching NASA’s official tracking for 3I/ATLAS.

The exposure was logged at 11:48 p.m. local time in northern Chile.

Esta’s observatory is not a professional dome but a converted farm outbuilding located in Vicuña, Chile, an area known for its clear southern skies.

Her equipment, a 150 mm refractor fitted with a narrowband H-alpha filter and cooled camera, is primarily designed for solar observations, not comet hunting.

However, on this particular night, it captured something extraordinary.

The image challenges conventional wisdom about how comets behave.

Typically, sunlight heats volatile ices within a comet, causing them to sublimate and vent gas and dust into space.

This process creates a coma—a fuzzy envelope around the nucleus—and two distinct tails: the dust tail, which is broad and curved, pointing away from the sun, and the ion tail, which is narrow and straight, swept directly away by solar wind.

In almost every observed case, these tails extend away from the solar glare, following the predictable physics of cometary behavior.

However, Esta’s raw frame presents a stark contrast to this template.

The nucleus appears as a sharply defined dark spot, but the surrounding coma is unusually faint.

Most strikingly, there is a narrow, columnated feature extending sunward, rather than the expected anti-solar direction.

This jet-like structure contradicts the established model of solar-driven sublimation, as it does not conform to the expected behavior of a comet nearing the sun.

The absence of a classic tail is particularly jarring for seasoned comet observers.

The solar sublimation model predicts that as a comet approaches the sun, its activity increases, the coma brightens, and the tails become more prominent.

Yet, in Esta’s image, the coma is minimal, and the only significant feature is a jet that runs counter to the expected direction.

If this were merely a photographic artifact, one would expect it to lack the sharp alignment with the sun’s position and not persist across independent processing attempts.

However, the jet structure appears too consistent with the comet’s orientation to be dismissed as random noise.

Standard explanations struggle to account for what Esta’s image presents.

While an anti-tail could sometimes appear to point toward the sun due to projection effects, such features are typically broad and diffuse.

In contrast, Esta’s image shows a tightly focused jet, not a wide dust sheet.

The atmospheric conditions during the exposure were excellent, as confirmed by the observatory’s logs, which indicate no drift or distortion that could smear the feature.

Differential sublimation, where unusual ices or organics erupt from a sunward-facing vent, could theoretically produce a jet.

However, this would not explain the lack of a standard tail or the faintness of the coma.

No professional observatory has released contemporaneous images to confirm or refute the absence of a classic anti-solar tail at this epoch.

Earlier Hubble frames from July showed a typical dust plume and hints of a tail, but by October 20th, only Esta’s snapshot exists, leaving the field open for interpretation.

Is this a fleeting natural phenomenon, a sign of exotic comet chemistry, or something that bends the rules of comet physics?

For now, Esta’s frame stands as both a challenge and an invitation, demanding a closer look at what comets can and perhaps cannot do.

Every claim of unusual comet behavior undergoes rigorous scrutiny before reaching for new physics.

The first checkpoint is geometry; sometimes what appears as a sunward jet is simply an anti-tail caused by the viewing angle.

Modeling the position of 3I/ATLAS on October 20th reveals that the orbital plane was tilted nearly edge-on but not perfectly aligned.

The threshold for a strong anti-tail effect was not quite met, meaning that even if projection played a role, the anti-tail would be broad and diffuse, not sharply columnated like the feature in Esta’s frame.

Next comes the question of activity cycles; comets are notoriously fickle, flaring up or fading out as sunlight unlocks pockets of volatile ices.

While short-lived jets can erupt from sunward-facing vents, these events are usually chaotic and transient.

The persistence of the sun-facing feature across multiple exposures complicates the transient jet scenario.

If this were a fleeting outburst, the structure should have changed or vanished between exposures.

Atmospheric distortion is another factor to consider.

Poor seeing can blur or stretch features, but Esta’s logs show steady conditions, with field stars appearing round and unsmeared.

If the jet were an artifact of seeing, it would also show up in the stars, not just the comet.

Similarly, sensor quirks, hot pixels, or readout streaks do not align with the comet’s motion, and calibration frames are clean.

Volatile chemistry offers another potential explanation.

While standard comets are primarily driven by water ice, 3I/ATLAS has hinted at a significant role for carbon dioxide and exotic organics.

Spectra from August and September indicated a carbon dioxide-to-water ratio approaching 8:1—one of the highest ever recorded.

If a sunward vent were dominated by carbon dioxide or a metal-organic compound, it could produce a jet with different brightness and structure than a typical water-driven outflow.

However, this does not explain the minimal coma or the absence of a classic anti-solar tail.

Replication attempts using synthetic data and various calibration frames have failed to create anything with the same sharpness and alignment as Esta’s image.

Dr. Jonah Louu, a comet physicist, stated, “We’ve seen anti-tails, we’ve seen transient jets, but we haven’t seen this exact combination—columnated, sun-facing, and persistent without a tail. It’s not impossible, but it’s not in the playbook.”

After running through the checklist of possible explanations, several natural scenarios fall short.

Geometry cannot fully account for the feature’s shape, transient activity does not explain its persistence, and atmospheric or instrumental artifacts have been ruled out.

The growing list of anomalies surrounding 3I/ATLAS continues to challenge conventional cometary physics.

As perihelion approaches on October 29th, every new observation is scrutinized, and every anomaly is logged.

The next eight days will test the limits of both natural models and imagination.

Perihelion for 3I/ATLAS arrives on October 29th, hidden behind the sun from Earth’s perspective.

This timing is critical, as any sudden change—natural or otherwise—could pass undetected by ground telescopes.

For the next week, the only eyes on the comet belong to space-based instruments such as SOHO’s Lasco Coronagraph and the Parker Solar Probe.

Their data will be patchy and often filtered for solar safety, but they remain the only monitors as 3I/ATLAS swings through the Earth window.

Once the comet emerges from conjunction, photometry will become the first line of evidence.

A sudden brightness jump could signal an outburst or fragmentation, while a flat or fading curve would be unusual for a post-perihelion comet.

Morphological changes will also be closely monitored.

Will a classic anti-solar tail appear?

Is there a persistent jet?

Or will new structures emerge?

Fragmentation, the appearance of companions, or even small shifts in trajectory could all provide valuable clues.

Interpreting these changes will require caution, as image processing choices can create or erase faint features.

In the weeks following perihelion, the narrative surrounding 3I/ATLAS will be shaped not just by what is seen, but by how it is measured, checked, and understood.

No peer-reviewed professional report has yet explained the jet structure captured in Esta’s image.

As 3I/ATLAS approaches perihelion on October 29th, ground-based scopes will lose visibility, leaving only SOHO and the Parker Solar Probe to observe.

The next decisive evidence is expected in early November when the object emerges from conjunction.

Until then, the true nature of 3I/ATLAS—whether natural or otherwise—remains unresolved.

The world watches as the countdown to perihelion continues, with only eight days left to uncover the secrets of this enigmatic interstellar comet.