"Now, in a new yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, an international team of astronomers analyzed data collected by the European Very Large Telescope's Ultraviolet and Visual Echelle Spectrograph (UVES) - and finding that 3I/ATLAS shows an "extreme abundance ratio" of nickel and iron in its gas plume. That makes it stand out when compared to both familiar solar system comets and 2I/Borisov, the second interstellar object to have been observed in 2019, which was also a comet."
"Nickel showed up across all readings, while iron was only detected when it drew closer than 2.64 astronomical units, or just over two and a half times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Despite being a "carbon-depleted comet," they found that 3I/ATLAS "exhibits extreme properties in the early phases of its activity with regard to the production rates and abundance ratios of nickel and iron.""
UVES observations show that 3I/ATLAS exhibits an extreme nickel-to-iron abundance ratio in its gaseous coma, distinguishing it from solar system comets and 2I/Borisov. Spectral monitoring across six epochs detected nickel in every reading, while iron appeared only when the object was within 2.64 astronomical units of the Sun. Ambient temperatures at observed distances are too low to vaporize silicate, sulfide, and metallic grains that normally contain nickel and iron, making atomic detections puzzling. The object is carbon-depleted yet shows unusually high early-phase nickel and iron production rates that may change with heliocentric distance.
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