From Newsgroup: alt.astronomy

Let us keep the dramma low, it will still be very far from Earth,
almost twice as far away as the Sun is.

from https://www.space.com/news/live/interstellar-comet-3i-atlas-closest-to-earth-flyby-week-dec-17-2025

Latest Comet 3I/ATLAS news: Closest approach to Earth this week
Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025: Your daily feed for the holiday flyby of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS by Earth.
News
By Anthony Wood, Daisy Dobrijevic, Tariq Malik last updated 2 hours ago

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A white light of the comet 3I/ATLAS is surrounded by a blue glow against
a black background
(Image: -- NASA, ESA, STScI, D. Jewitt (UCLA). Image Processing: J.
DePasquale (STScI))
The interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS will make its closest approach to Earth
this week on Dec. 19, 2025. Here's the latest news you need to know.

Comet 3I/ATLAS will approach within 168 million miles (270 million
kilometers) of Earth when it makes its close flyby on Dec. 19.
Astronomers are calling the comet flyby an early Christmas gift for scientists. Here's why.
NASA has given us 4 key facts to know about comet 3I/ATLAS.
Latest Comet 3I/ATLAS news
December 17, 2025 at 5:02 AM
Comet 3I/ATLAS: An early Christmas gift for scientists
A simulation of the solar system showing the trajectory of 3I/ATLAS
flying beyond the orbits of Earth, Mars, Mercury and Venus

3I/ATLAS is currently racing away from the sun towards interstellar
space. (Image credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio)
When 3I/ATLAS is closest to Earth on Dec. 19, all the features that we
are looking for will be easier to detect with our telescopes and it has scientists as eager as kids on Christmas.

Comet 3I/ATLAS is the third large interstellar visitor (an asteroid or a comet) known to have passed through our solar system from beyond our
solar system. By studying it closely, astronomers hope to learn more
about other celestial objects through telescope observations.

"It has since been careening through the interstellar medium of the
Milky Way galaxy for billions of years," Darryl Z. Seligman, an
assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Michigan State
University, wrote in an op-ed. "And we get front-row seats to watch as
it gets close to our sun, for what is almost surely the first time it
has ever gotten close to a star".

Read the full op-ed on the comet's Earth flyby here.

Tariq Malik
Tariq Malik
Space.com Editor-in-Chief
December 17, 2025 at 3:58 AM
Comet 3I/ATLAS has last hurrah this week


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