From 2025 August 1 to August 15 UT, the SPHEREx spacecraft observed interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. Using R = 40–130 spectrophotometry at λ = 0.7–5 μm, lightcurves, spectra, and imaging of 3I were obtained. From these, robust detections of water gas emission at 2.7–2.8 μm and CO2 gas at 4.23–4.27 μm plus tentative detections of 13CO2 and CO gas were found. A slightly extended H2O coma was detected, and a huge CO2 atmosphere extending out to at least 4.2 × 105 km was discovered. Gas production rates and 1σ errors for H2O, 12CO2, 13CO2, and CO were Qgas = 3.2 × 1026 ± 20%, 1.6 × 1027 ± 10%, 1.3 × 1025 ± 25%, and 1.0 × 1026 ± 25%, respectively. Coaddition of all λ = 1.0–1.5 μm scattered light continuum images from 3I produced an image with high signal-to-noise ratio consistent with an unresolved source. The lightcurve of scattered light showed ≲15% variability over the observation period. The absolute brightness of 3I at 1.0–1.5 μm is consistent with a nucleus of <2.5 km radius surrounded by a 100 times brighter coma. The 1.5–4.0 μm continuum structure shows a strong spectral feature commensurate with water ice absorption seen in Kuiper Belt objects and distant comets. The observed cometary behavior of 3I, including its preponderance of CO2 emission, lack of CO output, small size, and predominance of large icy chunks of material in a flux-dominant coma, is similar to the behavior of short-period comet 103P/Hartley 2, the ”hyperactive, strongly thermally processed comet” flyby target of the NASA Deep Impact Extended mission in 2010. This correspondence suggests that interstellar objects can be significantly thermally processed before ejection into the interstellar medium, and by comparison to 1I and 2I, this processing can be widely variable in its physical outcome.
SPHEREx Pre-perihelion Mapping of H₂O, CO₂, and CO in Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS
Creators
-
Lisse, Carey M.1, 2
-
Bach, Yoonsoo P.3
-
Crill, Brendan P.4, 5
-
Korngut, Phil M.5
-
Cukierman, Ari J.5
-
Bryan, Sean A.6
-
Cooray, Asantha7
-
Dowell, C. Darren4, 5
-
Werner, Michael W.4
-
Hora, Joseph L.8
-
Rustamkulov, Zafar9
-
Lee, Jeong-Eun10
-
Lim, Bumhoo10
-
Fernandez, Y. R.11
-
Tolls, Volker8
-
Reach, W. T.12
-
Doré, O.4, 5
-
Zemcov, Michael4, 13
-
Bock, James J.4, 5
-
Cheng, Yun-Ting4, 5
-
Champagne, C.14
-
Choi, Seungwon10
-
Connelley, M.15
-
Emery, J. P.14
-
Everett, Spencer5
-
Faisst, Andreas L.9
-
Geem, Jooyeon16
-
Hui, Howard5
-
Ishiguro, Masateru10
-
Jin, Sunho3
-
Jo, Hangbin10
-
Mahlke, Max17
-
Masters, Daniel C.9
-
Melnick, Gary J.8
-
Nguyen, Chi H.5
-
Paladini, Roberta9
-
Sitko, M. L.12
-
Yang, Yujin3
-
1.
Johns Hopkins University
-
2.
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
-
3.
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
-
4.
Jet Propulsion Lab
-
5.
California Institute of Technology
-
6.
Arizona State University
-
7.
University of California, Irvine
-
8.
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
-
9.
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center
-
10.
Seoul National University
-
11.
University of Central Florida
-
12.
Space Science Institute
-
13.
Rochester Institute of Technology
-
14.
Northern Arizona University
-
15.
University of Hawaii at Hilo
-
16.
Luleå University of Technology
-
17.
Institut UTINAM
Abstract
Copyright and License
© 2026. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.
Acknowledgement
This Letter relies on data obtained by the SPHEREx Observatory (operated by Caltech and JPL on behalf of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under contract 80GSFC18C0011) that is hosted by IPAC as part of the IRSA archive (10.26131/IRSA652 SPHEREx Quick Release Spectral Images—QR2; SPHEREx Team 2025). We are indebted to the SPHEREx project for obtaining additional pointings at 3I, approximately 100% more than their nominal survey would have obtained less than three months after the start of the survey by testing and implementing a new commanding protocol. We have also used optical lightcurve trending data kindly supplied by S. Yoshida. The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and Arizona State University under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). The authors also acknowledge the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)22 at The University of Texas at Austin for providing computational resources that have contributed to the research results reported within this Letter.
Facilities
SPHEREx - , IRTF - Infrared Telescope Facility, SOLO - .
Software References
SPHEREx-Sky-Simulator (B. P. Crill et al. 2025), spiceypy (A. Annex et al. 2020), SPICE (C. H. Acton 1996; C. Acton et al. 2018), kete (D. Dahlen et al. 2025), skyloc,23 SPHEREx-SSO, astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018, 2022), ccdproc (M. Craig et al. 2025), photutils (L. Bradley et al. 2025).
Files
Lisse_2026_ApJL_1000_L52.pdf
Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2512.07318 (arXiv)
Funding
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80GSFC18C0011
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- 80NM0018D0004
Dates
- Submitted
-
2025-12-07
- Accepted
-
2026-02-10
- Available
-
2026-03-30Published
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department , Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) , Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) , Physics Department
- Publication Status
- Published