Photo: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva (Spaceengine), CC BY 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons
A colossal comet, perhaps the largest ever discovered, is approaching our solar system.
Astronomers have discovered the largest known comet, and is about a thousand times more massive than others.
Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, so named because it was found by the graduate student of the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania Pedro Bernardinelli and Professor Gary Bernstein, has between 62 Y 124 miles (100 to 200 kilometers) wide. The team announced the discovery in June.
The recently discovered comet, luckily is in a path that will not threaten Earth or any planet in the solar system.
However, this mass of ice, dust and rocks with at least 60 miles in diameter, and probably larger, is a fascinating and atypical visitor to our neighborhood.
The giant comet, also known as C / 2014 A271, is from the suburbs of our solar system and has been moving towards our sun for millions of years, sec a CNN .
This is also the most distant comet ever discovered on its inbound voyage, which will give scientists the opportunity to observe and study it in the coming years.
Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is currently about 3 billion kilometers away, roughly the distance from Uranus to the Sun, and at its closest point to Earth at 2031, it will be a little more than the distance from Saturn to the Sun.
The newly discovered huge Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is about 80 km in diameter !!. It will not be a naked eye object because its enormous distance to the Sun. Just now the first images show a little fuzzy dot: https://t.co/DEnuS7n2hM
Credit: image LOOK / LCO and graphic by NASA pic.twitter.com/e5CsWqQhkx– Xavi Bros (@Xavi_Bros) July 21, 2021
Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein was found in six years of data collected by the Dark Energy Chamber, located on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Inter-American Observatory Tololo in Chile. The data collected by this camera is incorporated into The Dark Energy Survey, a collaboration of more than 271 scientists in seven countries and 25 institutions.
What are comets
Comets are icy relics that were blown out of the solar system when giant planets formed and migrated to their current configurations. As comets approach our sun during their orbits, their ices evaporate, creating their characteristic appearance.
Comets include a nucleus , or the solid “dirty snowball” at its center. Commas are the gaseous clouds that form around the nucleus as the comet’s ice evaporates. The evaporating gas and dust are also pushed behind the comet, creating two tails illuminated by sunlight.
These queues can be hundreds or even millions of miles long.
The object images taken between 2014 Y 2018 did not show a comet tail. But in the last three years, the object grew a tail, officially becoming Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein.
Observations made using the Las Cumbres Observatory’s network of telescopes around the world helped confirm the status of the active comet.