Comet Atlas may have passed through our solar system before

Astronomers first noticed a comet called Atlas (C/2019 Y4) at the beginning of 2020. It was first detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) operated by the University of Hawaii. The asteroid was detected in mid-2020 as the main comet disintegrated into smaller pieces of ice. A new study investigated comet Atlas using observations from the NASA Hubble …