Fact check: What is the resolution of the 3I/ATLAS telescope?

1. Why the question confuses object and instrument — clarifying the basic claim

All supplied analyses repeatedly show that the term “3I/ATLAS” denotes the interstellar comet or object under study, not a telescope. Multiple analytic items state explicitly that the provided texts discuss observations of the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS by other telescopes and that the “resolution of the 3I/ATLAS telescope” is not mentioned because there is no such instrument described ^{[1] [5] [4]}. The materials list participating observatories—Hubble Space Telescope, HiRISE, CaSSIS aboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, Faulkes, Nordic Optical Telescope, and Southern African Large Telescope—each of which has known instrument resolutions reported in their own documentation, but the dataset contains no specification labeled as a “3I/ATLAS telescope resolution” ^{[2] [3]}.

2. What the sources actually report about imaging resolution

Where the provided files do address resolution, they attribute it to specific instruments: for example, CaSSIS on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is reported with an angular resolution of 11.36 microradians (∼2.34 arcseconds) per pixel in one analysis, and Hubble and HiRISE image resolutions are cited elsewhere in context of comparative capability ^{[2] [1]}. Several summaries of observing campaigns emphasize photometric and spectroscopic measurements across a network of telescopes but do not present a single, unified “3I/ATLAS telescope” metric; instead they report instrument-by-instrument capabilities relevant to resolving nucleus size and coma structure ^{[5] [4]}.

3. How published observing papers frame instrument limits and object size

The temporal-evolution and Hubble-observation papers cited in the analyses concentrate on derived physical parameters—nucleus size, activity levels, dust production—by combining data from ground-based and space telescopes. These studies derive size constraints from imaging and photometry rather than from a named “3I/ATLAS telescope” resolution. The analyses note that Hubble imaging and ground-based photometry constrain the nucleus and coma but stop short of assigning a resolution to an instrument called “3I/ATLAS” ^{[5] [6]}. This distinction matters because reported spatial resolution affects how confidently observers separate nucleus from coma, and those instrument-specific resolutions are available in the cited instrument descriptions, not under the object’s name ^[3].

4. Multiple viewpoints and potential sources of confusion in reporting

The supplied materials originate from mission teams, observatory reports, and aggregate summaries; some emphasize instrumentation (e.g., CaSSIS resolution) while others emphasize scientific interpretation (e.g., nucleus size constraints). This produces a mixed narrative where a lay summary could be misread to imply the object bears an instrument designation. The analyses indicate this ambiguity repeatedly: they flag no explicit “3I/ATLAS telescope resolution” in any document and instead show varied reporting of instrument capabilities and observational results ^{[1] [7] [8]}. Agencies and authors publishing images tend to label resolution by the instrument, so misattributing a resolution to the object’s name is a recurrent reporting error.

5. Conclusion and recommended next steps to get a numeric resolution if needed

If your goal is a numeric angular or spatial resolution for images of 3I/ATLAS, request the specific instrument and observation dataset—Hubble’s Wide Field Camera, CaSSIS (ExoMars), HiRISE, Faulkes, NOT, SALT—and then consult the instrument technical documents or the observation paper for per-pixel angular scale and achieved point-spread metrics. The supplied analyses demonstrate where those figures appear (CaSSIS 11.36 μrad/pixel cited, Hubble/HiRISE referenced elsewhere) but they do not provide a single “3I/ATLAS telescope” resolution because no such telescope appears in the documents ^{[2] [1] [3]}.