3I/ATLAS is only the third object of its kind ever observed, following the interstellar asteroid 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov in 2019.

Light from an extremely distant spiral galaxy was bent and magnified by the gravity of a member of the galaxy cluster SMACSJ0028.2-7537 into a ring-like structure, called an Einstein ring.