The giant comet C/2014 UN271, better known as Bernadinelli-Bernstein after the names of the astronomers who discovered it, is actually the largest ever found, five images from the Hubble Space Telescope (Hubble) have confirmed, the US space agency (NASA) has announced.
The mega-comet, first spotted by accident in 2010 and confirmed in 2014, has a solid core about 80 miles (129 kilometers) in diameter, 50 times larger than the average comet. Its core is larger than the entire US state of Rhode Island. Its mass is estimated at 500 trillion tons, 100,000 times that of a typical comet. The previous size record holder was comet C/2002 VQ94, discovered in 2002, and its nucleus diameter was estimated at 60 miles (96 km).
We have always suspected that this comet is large because it is so bright at such a great distance. Now we've confirmed it. This comet is just the tip of the iceberg, as many thousands of comets are too faint to be seen in the farthest reaches of the solar system, said planetary science and astronomy professor David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The researchers published the paper in the astrophysical journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The icy giant comet is moving at about 35,400 kilometers per hour and is currently far from Earth, and its closest distance from our planet is expected to be 1.6 billion kilometers, which it will approach in 2031, a safe distance that does not raise concerns. Its current temperature, as it is about 3.2 billion kilometres from the Sun, is minus 211 degrees Celsius.
The comet is estimated to come from the icy Oort Cloud, the farthest region of the solar system, where a huge number of comets hang out until some begin their journey to the inner solar system (and Earth) after a gravitational disruption of their hitherto orbit. Bernadinelli-Bernstein is estimated to take about three million years to complete an elliptical orbit around the Sun, reaching the limb (the furthest point of its orbit) at a distance of up to half a light-year from our star.
Comets leave behind a huge spectacular tail, while their main body, or core, is described by scientists as a dirty snowball because it consists of ice mixed with dust.
Source: Cyprus Times
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