A new telescope built to to track fast-moving space objects caught a comet from beyond the solar system moving across the sky — before anyone even knew it was there. The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile recently captured rare footage of the visitor known as 3I/ATLAS — only the third interstellar object discovered.

Its path through space will take it between the orbits of Earth and Mars before it heads back out toward interstellar space again. When it was discovered by NASA’s ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) on July 1,

On July 1, astronomers spotted an unusual high-speed object zooming towards the sun. Dubbed 3I/ATLAS, the surprising space traveler had one very special quality: its orbit showed it had come from outside our solar system.