{"id":3926821,"date":"2026-07-06T07:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T12:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/older-than-the-sun-astronomers-find-new-clues-to-the-origin-of-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T07:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T12:03:11","slug":"older-than-the-sun-astronomers-find-new-clues-to-the-origin-of-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/older-than-the-sun-astronomers-find-new-clues-to-the-origin-of-interstellar-comet-3i-atlas\/","title":{"rendered":"Older than the sun: Astronomers find new clues to the origin of interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory&#8217;s Very Large Telescope (ESO&#8217;s VLT) to study the composition of 3I\/ATLAS, the brightest interstellar object ever seen, in detail. By measuring specific chemical fingerprints\u2014the first observations of this kind for a comet that formed outside the solar system\u2014they found that 3I\/ATLAS likely originated in the outskirts of an old star system.<\/div>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2026-07-older-sun-astronomers-clues-interstellar.html\" target=\"_blank\">Go to Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Astronomers have used the European Southern Observatory&#8217;s Very Large Telescope (ESO&#8217;s VLT) to study the composition of 3I\/ATLAS, the brightest interstellar object ever seen, in detail. By measuring specific chemical fingerprints\u2014the first observations of this kind for a comet that formed outside the solar system\u2014they found that 3I\/ATLAS likely originated in the outskirts of an [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3926821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3926821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3926821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3926821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3926821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3926821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikedyess.info\/para\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3926821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}