3I/ATLAS Made Its "Closest" Pass, By Earth (@ ~168 Million Miles Off) At About 1 AM EST This Morning -- Now Headed Off, Eventually, For Interstellar Sapce...

We bid this lil' visitor adieu, though several Earth based telescopes hope to host "live streams" later tonight, since the skies last night over Hawaii were under cloud cover. The island's telescope will still get good eyes on it, weather permitting, tonight.

And so now we will await the download of the JWST imagery, which should come in a few weeks, and should definitively put to bed Harvard's Prof. Avi Loeb's oddball theory -- no, this was no spaceship. No intelligent design in evidence. It was a simple comet of interstellar origin, traveling for billions of years at this point -- but now on zipping onward, on its entirely natural (gravity influenced) trek through the Milky Way.

Like the speedy visitor of 2017, called Oumuamua -- this one has captured the imagination of many an amateur backyard telescope enthusiast. Here's the latest, as we get packed for the upcoming meteor shower we will witness with our own backyard 'scope, in Arizona by tomorrow night:

. . .Our interstellar visitor has officially passed its closest approach to Earth and is now heading back out toward the outer solar system — and eventually beyond.

On Dec. 19, comet 3I/ATLAS came within about 168 million miles of our planet, giving scientists a rare chance to study material from beyond our solar system before it begins its long journey back into the Milky Way. . . .

That upcoming one is called the "Ursid" meteor shower, and it will peak on the night of December 22, 2025, among the cacti. Yep -- we will report, and for the first time, try to capture some "uploadable quality" photos, through the 'scope then. Grin.

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