How do you measure a comet traveling at 22,000 miles per hour? ☄️
The Bernardinelli-Bernstein) comet — also known as C/2014 UN271 — is traveling in Earth's approximate direction at 22,000 miles per hour , though it will never fly closer thanThe nucleus is estimated to have a diameter of approximately 80 miles across and a mass of 500 trillion tons, making it approximately a hundred thousand times greater in mass than the average comet found closer to our Sun.
The previous record-holder is C/2002 VQ94, which was estimated to have a diameter of 60 miles across when it was discovered in 2002.Comet C/2014 UN27 was discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in November 2010 when they were studying archival images from the Dark Energy Survey at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.
The team behind the new study set out to confirm predictions of Bernardinelli-Bernstein's immense size. They used the Hubble Space Telescope to take five photos of the comet on January 8, 2022. Using advanced computer modeling, they were able to measure the vast dusty coma enveloping the comet from the comet's nucleus.
A sequence showing the Bernardinelli-Bernstein nucleus compared to initial the observation showing the comet's dusty coma. Source: "This is an amazing object, given how active it is when it's still so far from the Sun," said the paper's lead author Man-To Hui of the Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau."We guessed the comet might be pretty big, but we needed the best data to confirm this.
, as it is believed the comet originated in this theorized spherical shell of space rocks surrounding our solar system. and counting, leading to the publication of 18,000 scientific papers on papers ranging from dark energy to black holes and neutron stars. However, a series of technical problems in recent months and years, mean that the space observatory's confirmation of Bernardinelli-Bernstein's size might be one of its final missions.
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