Overview
- The third confirmed interstellar visitor reaches closest approach on December 19 at roughly 270 million kilometers, about twice the Earth–Sun distance.
- The European Space Agency says the object poses no danger to Earth or other planets during its inner solar system passage.
- Recent images from the Hubble Space Telescope and ESA’s JUICE mission track the comet’s activity as it nears and recedes from the Sun.
- Researchers plan spectroscopic studies of dust and gas released by solar heating to probe the composition and origins of material from another star system.
- Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb publicizes a new claimed anomaly in the comet’s anti-tail, a suggestion other scientists and NASA reject as 3I/ATLAS matches a normal comet profile.