Explanation: Attention grabbing interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS made its not-so-close flyby of our fair planet on December 19 at a distance of 1.8 astronomical units. That's about 900 light-seconds. This deep exposure captures the comet from another star system as it gently swept across a faint background of stars in the constellation Leo about 4 days earlier. Though faint, colors emphasized in the image data show off the comet's yellowish dust tail and bluish ion tail along with a greenish tinged coma. And even as it is scrutinized by arrays of telescopes and spacecraft from planet Earth, 3I/ATLAS is headed out of the Solar System. It's presently moving outward along a hyperbolic trajectory at about 64 kilometers per second relative to the Sun, too fast to be bound by the Sun's gravity.

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Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.

Publikacii s klyuchevymi slovami: comet Publikacii so slovami: comet
Sm. takzhe: APOD: 2025 December 30 B An Artificial Comet SWAN, Swan, Eagle APOD: 2025 October 6 B The Changing Ion Tail of Comet Lemmon 3I ATLAS: hvosty mezhzvezdnoi komety Kometa Lemmon i Mlechnyi Put' 3I/ATLAS: vid s planety Zemlya Bluzhdayushii hvost komety Lemmon Vse publikacii na tu zhe temu >>