Comet 3I/ATLAS – a rare, interstellar comet – made its closest approach to Earth overnight, coming to within 168 million miles (that’s 270 million kilometers) of our planet.
|Photos:
1. This image, provided by NASA, shows the interstellar comet 3I/Atlas captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on Nov. 30, 2025, about 178 million miles from Earth.
Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA), M.-T. Hui (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory), J. DePasquale (STScI) via AP
2. The second image shows the 3I/ATLAS interstellar comet as a bright, fuzzy orb in the center. Traveling through our solar system at a staggering 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) per hour from September 11-25.
Credit: NASA/Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang