We're very excited to be studying the very first Interstellar comet
that has ever been discovered and it's very exciting that Hubble's in position to
conduct some very important observations of it.
Hi, my name is Max Mutchler. I'm a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
And I work on solar system observations
using the Hubble Space Telescope.
Hubble's been studying comets throughout its mission, over 30 years. It's particularly well-suited, actually, to
studying small solar system objects because it has such exquisite
resolution and sensitivity
and the source of all the activity in comets is a tiny nucleus that's hard to see and so Hubble gives us a really good
chance to understand what's happening there.
And this comet is unique because every other comet we've been studying with Hubble has been a part of our solar system,
orbiting the Sun.
This is the first one that we know isn't orbiting the Sun. It's coming from outside of our solar system and it's just passing through.
And so we really want to study it to learn ...
Is it like the comets that we're familiar with or is it totally different?
And it's going to tell us something about
what's going on in other solar systems, other star systems around our galaxy.
This is really what you get into to science for, it's for moments like this. You're ready. Your team is ready. Hubble is
ready.
And these type of things happen at random moments and so you have to be ready when opportunity knocks.
And so it's very exciting to be part of a team
that can pounce when something like this happens and know that we're getting the best data we can possibly get from Hubble.
And we're not going to miss this opportunity to learn whatever we can from this object that's just whizzing along and is
going to be gone before we know it.