{"copyright":"Dan Bartlett","date":"2025-12-26","explanation":"Attention grabbin g 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-s econds. 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 abo ut 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 teles copes and spacecraft from planet Earth, 3I ATLAS is headed out of the Solar Syst em. It's presently moving outward along a hyperbolic trajectory at about 64 kilo meters per second relative to the Sun, too fast to be bound the Sun's gravity.", "hdurl":"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/image\/2512\/3IATLAS_2025_12_15_JuneLake _DEBartlett.jpg","media_type":"image","service_version":"v1","title":"3I\/ATLAS Flyby","url":"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/apod\/image\/2512\/3IATLAS_2025_12_15_Jun eLake_DEBartlett1024.jpg"}
