Copyright:Dan Bartlett
中文翻譯:
你知道嗎，有一顆特別的彗星叫做3I/ATLAS，最近在12月19日飛過我們的地球！它距離地球有1.8個天文單位，這大約是900光秒喔！這張圖片拍到它在獅子座的星星背景中輕輕地移動，拍攝的時間是在12月15日。雖然這顆彗星有點淡，但在圖片的顏色中，可以看到它的黃色塵埃尾巴和藍色的離子尾巴，還有綠色的彗髮。即使有很多望遠鏡和太空船在觀察它，3I/ATLAS還是在朝著太陽系外飛去！現在，它正以每秒64公里的速度沿著一條hyperbolic軌道向外移動，太快了以至於無法被太陽的引力束縛住。
原文:
Attention grabbing interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS made its not-so-close flyby of our fair planet on December 19 at a distance of 1.8 astronomical units. That’s about 900 light-seconds. Still, this deep exposure captures the comet from another star system as it gently swept across a faint background of stars in the constellation Leo about 4 days earlier, on the night of December 15. Though faint, colors emphasized in the image data, show off the comet’s yellowish dust tail and bluish ion tail along with a greenish tinged coma. And even while scrutinized by arrays of telescopes and spacecraft from planet Earth, 3I ATLAS is headed out of the Solar System. It’s presently moving outward along a hyperbolic trajectory at about 64 kilometers per second relative to the Sun, too fast to be bound the Sun’s gravity.
來源:NASA每日圖片
