Astronomers have measured the icy coronary heart of one of many largest comets ever found — a gargantuan, 4 billion-year-old rock that is at present barreling towards Earth at 22,000 mph (35,000 km/h).
Don’t fear: The monumental, icy rock — named C/2014 UN271, or Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB) after its discoverers — is on target to overlook our planet by about 1 billion miles when it makes its closest strategy in 2031, Live Science beforehand reported. For comparability, that is better than the common distance between Saturn and the solar — and much sufficient away that stargazers will not be capable of see BB’s flyby with the bare eye.
However, as BB zooms ever nearer, astronomers are taking the chance to check it in ever better element. Previous analysis confirmed that the icy house rock measures greater than 80 miles (128 km) throughout — about twice the width of Rhode Island — and is about 100 thousand instances extra huge than a typical comet. BB is so massive that it was as soon as mistaken for a dwarf planet; newer observations confirmed that the rock sports activities a glowing tail, or coma, which is a transparent indicator of an icy comet hovering by means of the comparatively heat interior photo voltaic system.
Now, astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to look by means of the rock’s blazing coma and focus immediately on its icy coronary heart. While BB remains to be too distant to picture in clear element, the Hubble observations allowed researchers to establish a brilliant spot of sunshine similar to the comet’s coronary heart, or nucleus, in accordance with analysis printed April 12 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
The staff then used a pc mannequin to digitally take away the glow of the comet’s brilliant coma, abandoning simply the nucleus. The ensuing information reveals that the comet’s nucleus is about 50 instances bigger than typical comets noticed within the interior photo voltaic system — the only largest nucleus astronomers have ever detected.
The staff’s evaluation additionally revealed the colour of the comet’s icy nucleus.
“It’s big and it’s blacker than coal,” examine co-author David Jewitt, a planetary science professor at UCLA, stated in a press release.
Still roughly 2 billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) from Earth, BB has loads of house to cowl earlier than its close-up in 2031. Researchers reported in a examine printed in November 2021 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that the comet made its final shut strategy to Earth 3.5 million years in the past, when it got here inside about 1.6 billion miles (2.6 billion km) of the solar.
In the meantime, BB has been swooping by means of the Oort cloud — an enormous scrapyard of icy rocks that encircles our photo voltaic system, probably stretching for billions of miles into house.
Originally printed on Live Science.