NASA launched close-up pictures on Wednesday of the uncommon interstellar comet that’s making a single cross by the photo voltaic system.
One of many pictures reveals the comet, also referred to as 3I/ATLAS, because it strikes by house about 190 million miles from Earth. It was taken from Manciano, Italy.
This picture offered by Gianluca Masi reveals the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS because it streaks by house, 190 million miles from Earth, on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. The picture was taken from Manciano, Italy.
Gianluca Masi / AP
The comet was first found in July and has been photographed a number of instances. In early August, pictures launched confirmed the comet from about 277 million miles away. A month in the past, pictures taken by two Mars orbiters confirmed a brilliant, fuzzy white dot of the comet about 18,641,135 miles away from Mars.
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, circled within the middle, as seen by the L’LORRI panchromatic, or black-and-white, imager on NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. This picture was made by stacking a sequence of pictures taken on Sept. 16, 2025, because the comet was zooming towards Mars.
NASA/Goddard/SwRI/JHU-APL
3I/ATLAS is just the third ever interstellar comet confirmed to enter our photo voltaic system.
The comet is seen from Earth within the predawn sky by utilizing binoculars or a telescope.
“Everyone that is in control of a telescope wants to look at it because it’s a fascinating and rare opportunity,” NASA’s appearing astrophysics director, Shawn Domagal-Goldman, instructed The Related Press.
This film reveals PUNCH’s observations of comet 3I/ATLAS from Sept. 28 to Oct. 10, 2025, when the comet was between 231 million to 235 million miles from Earth.
NASA/Southwest Analysis Institute
The comet will make its closest strategy to Earth on Friday, Dec. 19, coming inside about 170 million miles, which is sort of twice the Earth-Solar distance. NASA spacecraft will maintain monitoring it because it strikes by the photo voltaic system, crossing Jupiter’s orbit in spring 2026.
ESA’s Juice spacecraft, sure for Jupiter, has been coaching its cameras and scientific devices on the comet all month, significantly after it made its closest cross to the solar. However scientists gained’t get any of those observations again till February as a result of Juice’s essential antenna is serving as a warmth defend whereas it’s close to the solar, limiting the movement of knowledge.
Named for the telescope in Chile that first noticed it, the comet is believed to be anyplace from 1,444 ft throughout to three.5 miles throughout. Observations point out that the exceptionally fast-moving comet could have originated in a star system older than our personal — “which gives me goose bumps to think about,” stated NASA scientist Tom Statler.
The Excessive Decision Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) digital camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this picture of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on Oct. 2, 2025.
NASA/JPL-Caltech/College of Arizona
“That means that 3I/ATLAS is not just a window into another solar system, it’s a window into the deep past and so deep in the past that it predates even the formation of our Earth and our sun,” Statler instructed reporters.
NASA officers dismissed rumors that the “friendly solar system visitor” may really be an alien spacecraft.
