Key Highlights
- Each new glimpse gives scientists the scope to study what icy bodies from another star system are made of, how they behave near the Sun, and how their chemistry stacks up against comets formed around our own star.
- The Perihelion - which is the point in the orbit of a planet, asteroid, or comet at which it is closest to the sun was measured to be about 1.4 AU (just inside Mars’ orbit) Where it is now: As per reports, the 3I/ATLAS comet has been moving away from the Sun, laying around hundreds of millions of kilometers from Earth Closest approach to Earth: Around December 19 The new Hubble image shows a compact, bright nucleus wrapped in a soft, slightly lopsided coma.
- Background stars appear as streaks because Hubble tracked the comet’s motion—another sign that 3I/ATLAS is still active well after its solar flyby.
- It wasn't just Hubble.
- According to a report by El-Balad, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft had captured multispectral snapshots in September, helping refine the comet’s trajectory and revealing details of its faint outer coma.
