Nathan X. Roth

Comet 3I/ATLAS was spotted when it entered the Solar System from interstellar space. The James Webb Telescope split the light from its gas cloud into a rainbow, a spectrum, and in this pattern, the lines of rare molecules with deuterium (heavy hydrogen) appeared.

In March 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope pointed its instruments at the short-period comet 81P/Wild 2. This celestial body, about the size of a small town (nucleus radius around 1.77 km), is already familiar to scientists: in 2006, the Stardust probe flew through its tail and collected dust samples that were later studied in Earth laboratories.