![]() ![]() I feel that it was the best of all the disaster films made in recent years. The cloud remains a theory because it's too distant to be observed, so the largest structure in our solar system is essentially invisible.I just saw this film again after several years. It's now less than two billion miles from our sun.Īstronomers hope that studying Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein could reveal more about the Oort Cloud, first hypothesized by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort in 1950. The comet experiences a 3-million-year-long, oval-shaped orbit. ![]() The team's analysis not only revealed the size of the nucleus, but also the fact that it's darker than coal, Jewitt said. This cloudy coma is why comets look fuzzy when we see them through telescopes. The heat of the sun warms the comet as it approaches, causing parts of it to sublimate, or transition from a solid to a gas. The research team used Hubble data to distinguish the comet's nucleus from the coma, or the dusty envelope that surrounds a comet as it gets closer to the sun. "We guessed the comet might be pretty big, but we needed the best data to confirm this." "This is an amazing object, given how active it is when it's still so far from the Sun," said lead author Man-To Hui, assistant professor at the Macau University of Science and Technology in Taipa, Macau, in a statement. In a few million years, Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein's orbit will return it to the Oort Cloud. Comets travel back toward the sun when their orbits experience the gravitational tug of passing stars. The gravity of the largest planets kicked comets out to the Oort Cloud, and the cloud is now the home of distant comets on the edge of our solar system that extends out into deep space. Now we confirm it is."Ĭomets are relics from the early days of the solar system, icy leftover pieces from when the planets were forming. "We've always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance. "This comet is literally the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system," said study coauthor David Jewitt, a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a statement. The images are part of a new study published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. In January, researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to take five photos of the comet. Since then, astronomers have observed the comet with ground and space-based telescopes. The comet was first observed in 2010 and is also known as Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein in honor of its discoverers. The comet was discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein as they looked through archival images taken by the Dark Energy Survey at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. But it will never get closer than one billion miles away from the sun - just a little farther than the distance between Earth and Saturn. The comet is moving at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of our solar system and will make its closest approach to us in 2031. This nucleus is about 50 times larger than those of other comets, and it has an estimated mass of 500 trillion tons, which is 100,000 times greater than the mass of a typical comet. That's more than twice the width of Rhode Island. While most of the known comet nuclei measure a few miles across, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope spotted Comet C/2014 UN271 with a nucleus that reaches 85 miles across. This diagram compares the size of the icy, solid nucleus of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein to several other comets. This nucleus is made of ice and dust, which forms a dirty snowball. MIAMI (CBSMiami/CNN) - The largest comet ever seen, with a nucleus larger than the state of Rhode Island is heading our way, but Earth is in no danger of a "Don't Look Up" situation, astronomers say.Īlthough comets are most recognizable for their streaming tails, which can stretch for millions of miles, the heart of a comet is its solid nucleus. ![]()
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