3I ATLAS Flyby
AI Summary1 min read
TL;DR
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS flew past Earth on December 19 at 1.8 AU, captured in a deep exposure from December 15 showing its colorful tails. It is now exiting the Solar System on a hyperbolic trajectory at high speed.
3I/ATLAS Flyby
Image 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. Still, 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, on the night of December 15. 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 while 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 the Sun's gravity.