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Astronomers have measured the icy mettle of one of the gravid comet ever discovered — a gargantuan , 4 billion - class - honest-to-god rock that ’s presently barrel towardEarthat 22,000 miles per hour ( 35,000 km / h ) .
Do n’t worry : The tremendous , glacial careen — key C/2014 UN271 , or Bernardinelli - Bernstein ( BB ) after its inventor — is on row to miss our planet by about 1 billion miles when it makes its closest approach in 2031,Live Science previously reported . For comparison , that ’s greater than the modal length between Saturn andthe Sunday — and far enough away that stargazer wo n’t be able to see BB ’s flyby with the bare middle .
An illustration of the massive comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, possibly the largest comet ever detected.
However , as BB zooms ever closer , stargazer are take on the opportunity to study it in ever greater particular . old research evidence that the glacial space rock measure more than 80 Roman mile ( 128 km ) across — about twice the breadth of Rhode Island — and is about 100 thousand times more massive than a typical comet . BB is so large that it was once mistaken for a dwarf planet ; more recent observations shew that the rock cavort a burn tail , or coma , which is a clear indicator of an frosty comet soaring through the comparatively warm innersolar system of rules .
Now , astronomers have used theHubble Space Telescopeto equal through the rock ’s blaze coma and focus straight on its icy nub . While BB is still too far out to image in clean particular , the Hubble observations allowed researchers to identify a undimmed billet of light corresponding to the comet ’s heart , or nucleus , according to enquiry published April 12 inThe Astrophysical Journal Letters .
The team then used a computer mannequin to digitally remove the gleaming of the comet ’s shining coma , leaving behind just the nucleus . The resulting data shows that the comet ’s nucleus is about 50 metre big than typical comets observed in the innersolar organisation — the individual largest core group uranologist have ever detected .
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The squad ’s analysis also disclose the color of the comet ’s icy core group .
" It ’s large and it ’s blacker than ember , " study co - author David Jewitt , a world scientific discipline professor at UCLA , said in a statement .
Still roughly 2 billion miles ( 3.2 billion km ) from Earth , BB has lot of space to embrace before its conclusion - up in 2031 . research worker reported in a study publish in November 2021 inThe Astrophysical Journal Lettersthat the comet made its last close approach to Earth 3.5 million twelvemonth ago , when it came within about 1.6 billion mile ( 2.6 billion kilometre ) of the sun .
In the meantime , BB has been swooping through the Oort swarm — a huge scrapyard of icy rocks that gird our solar system , potentially stretch for jillion of miles into space .
Originally published on Live Science .
