An interstellar comet that has captivated astronomers this year narrowly missed becoming the first object named after the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

The event happened on June 20, 2025, when Rubin was practising its imaging system for the first time at night and detected 3I/ATLAS, which occurred ten days before ATLAS discovered it on July 1.

If the Chilean telescope’s data processing pipelines were in place, it would have been able to claim........

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