Cyrielle Opitom

Cyrielle Opitom is an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh. She led the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT/UVES) study of 3i-atlas, with Jean Manfroid and Damien Hutsemékers (University of Liège), measuring carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in cyanide (CN) — the first dual-isotope measurement of any interstellar object, published in Nature Astronomy (July 2026). Her results corroborate the isotopic findings — anomalously low ¹³C/¹²C and high D/H — published in Nature on June 22, 2026 by martin-cordiner and stefanie-milam (NASA Goddard); Cordiner is also a co-author on Opitom’s paper.

Key work

• Lead author of the ESO VLT/UVES spectroscopic study of 3I/ATLAS’s CN (cyanide-bound carbon and nitrogen) isotope composition — first dual carbon+nitrogen isotope measurement of an interstellar object
• Results corroborate the JWST NIRSpec ancient-origin, cold-birthplace interpretation (~10–12 Gyr)

“They are sort of fossils from a planetary formation process that happened very far away, but that we get the chance to study from much closer.” — Cyrielle Opitom

Sources

• src-3i-atlas-nasa-webb-ancient-2026-06
• src-3i-atlas-nitrogen-isotope-eso-2026-07 — ESO (Jul 6 2026): full primary write-up of Opitom’s lead-authored Nature Astronomy paper