{"id":799791,"date":"2025-12-18T09:26:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=799791"},"modified":"2025-12-18T09:26:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:26:29","slug":"3i-atlas-makes-closest-approach-to-earth-on-december-19-live-stream-from-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=799791","title":{"rendered":"3I\/ATLAS makes closest approach to Earth on December 19, live stream from Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div xmlns:default=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\">\n<p><strong>Comet 3I\/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Earth on December 19, 2025, and can be watched via the Virtual Telescope Project live stream, scheduled to start at 04:00 UTC on December 19 (23:00 EST on December 18).<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"perfmatters-lazy-youtube\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ficGuvPxV0s\" data-id=\"ficGuvPxV0s\" data-query=\"feature=oembed\" onclick=\"perfmattersLazyLoadYouTube(this);\">\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><noscript><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS, closest approach to the Earth: online observation \u2013 19 Dec. 2025.\" width=\"1110\" height=\"833\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ficGuvPxV0s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/noscript>\n<\/div><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Virtual Telescope Project will host a free livestream starting at 04:00 UTC on December 19 (23:00 EST on December 18), sharing real-time telescope views of comet 3I\/ATLAS captured by its robotic observatories in Manciano, Italy, weather permitting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Comet 3I\/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Earth at around 06:00 UTC on December 19 (01:00 EST on December 18). At that time, it will be about 1.8 AU or 270 million km (168 million miles), nearly twice the average distance between Earth and the Sun.<\/p>\n<p>3I\/ATLAS was first observed by the ATLAS survey in Chile on July 1, 2025, and is the third confirmed object of its kind to enter the solar system.<\/p>\n<p>The comet caught the eye of the public and scientists alike, with speculations of it being an alien spaceship after Harvard professor Avi Loeb co-authored a paper exploring the hypothesis.<\/p>\n<p>It then made it back into the news when a team of Auburn University physicists using NASA\u2019s Neil Gehrels Swift <span style=\"box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;\">Observatory\u00a0detected the ultraviolet fingerprint of water in the\u00a0<\/span>interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS. This was the first confirmed ultraviolet detection of water from a comet that originated beyond our solar system.<\/p>\n<p>The European Space Agency\u2019s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Mars Express spacecraft recorded images of interstellar comet 3I\/ATLAS on October 3, 2025, from about 30 million km (18.6 million miles) away, marking the closest observation of the object from any spacecraft so far.<\/p>\n<p>3I\/ATLAS reached perihelion at approximately 11:47 UTC on October 29, 2025, at a heliocentric distance of about 1.356 AU (203 million km or 126 million miles).<\/p>\n<p class=\"has-theme-palette-6-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-d411a99d1f8a8996cbfe31c8b5425bd5\"><em>Feature image credit: Satoru Murata<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!-- MOLONGUI AUTHORSHIP PLUGIN 5.1.0 --><br \/>\n<!-- https:\/\/www.molongui.com\/wordpress-plugin-post-authors --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/watchers.news\/2025\/12\/18\/3i-atlas-closest-approach-to-earth-december-19-live-stream\/?rand=772151\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comet 3I\/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Earth on December 19, 2025, and can be watched via the Virtual Telescope Project live stream, scheduled to start at 04:00 UTC&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":799174,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-799791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genaero"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=799791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/799174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=799791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=799791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=799791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}