In a new paper that was just accepted for publication yesterday (and posted as a preprint here), I reported with Mauro Barbieri that tomorrow, January 22, 2026, the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS will arrive at its rare “full Moon” phase — when observers from Earth will see it from the direction of the Sun to within an extremely small misalignment angle of just 0.69 degrees (0.012 radians). This rare alignment will result in a brightness surge whose magnitude and growth rate could constrain the composition and structure of the particles shed by 3I/ATLAS.
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