Overview
- The third confirmed interstellar visitor comes closest at roughly 06:00 UTC on December 19 at about 1.8 AU, or ~270 million kilometers, from Earth.
- The object is too faint for naked‑eye viewing, with pre‑dawn observing favored using medium telescopes under dark skies in the constellation Leo as it moves toward Virgo.
- Live coverage was scheduled through the night of December 18 into the morning of December 19 via the Virtual Telescope Project, with additional streams available on NASA+.
- The reported acceleration was derived from precise position measurements using NASA’s Psyche spacecraft and ESA’s Mars Trace Gas Orbiter, consistent with outgassing effects seen in comets.
- More than 200 facilities, including Hubble, SPHEREx and major ground observatories, have collected images, spectra and astrometry during the object’s brief passage through the inner solar system.