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Credit & Copyright: Dan Bartlett
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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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: comet
Publications with words: comet
See also:
- APOD: 2025 December 30 Á An Artificial Comet
- SWAN, Swan, Eagle
- APOD: 2025 October 6 Á The Changing Ion Tail of Comet Lemmon
- APOD: 2025 December 1 Á 3I ATLAS: Tails of an Interstellar Comet
- APOD: 2025 November 25 Á Comet Lemmon and the Milky Way
- 3I/ATLAS: A View from Planet Earth
- APOD: 2025 November 17 Á Comet Lemmons Wandering Tail