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Posted on 12/26/2025 1:37:48 PM PST by MtnClimber
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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Pinging the APOD list
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1.8 astronomical units.
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For an interstellar spaceship, designed by some interstellar supercivilization to spy on Earth, that is rather large distance.
I would think, they would guide it to get closer to us!
Wow.
They were too busy turning it into gold to lure us in.
How close do they need to be to release their pods with illegal alien criminals?
Sailing along at 143,332 mph.
When it was determined to be an alien probe, we activated our planetary defense system and hit them with a non-stop stream of The View episodes.
The aliens turned tail and are runnin’ away.
That thing flew very close to 3 other planets which is miraculous.
If it was a spaceship they did that while also avoiding any contact with Earth, perfect timing. That is what an intelligent space faring race would do. LOL but yes.
Can you tell anything about it when you do that?
No. They have all this advanced equipment that can zero in from there, like they zapped that artificial satellite orbiting Jupiter. They can probably read the time on your wristwatch.
And that’s the best view of 3I/Atlas we’re gonna have.
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