The Hubble Telescope has measured the size of the largest known comet

It’s definitive, comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein well and truly worthy of its title of “largest comet ever observed.” Discovered in 2014, it received this qualification only in 2021 without its exact dimensions yet. Since the beginning of April 2022, this mystery is about to dissipate.

Actually, Hubble telescope It was mobilized on the scientific process in order to make this analogy. Located above the Earth’s atmosphere, it is untouched by human light pollution and other disturbing phenomena. to me The New York TimesComet nucleus can be up to 137 kilometers in diameter. Its mass could reach 500,000 billion tons, or “2,800 Mount Everest,” as determined by the American daily.

According to the scholars, We won’t be able to see this comet in the sky until 2031 and pass “close enough” to Earth. However, do not panic, the celestial body does not threaten humanity, as specialists assure. In just under ten years, Bernardinelli-Bernstein should approach Saturn before returning to the limits of the universe.

And the American media quoted astronomers as saying that “other secrets of the comet will be revealed when it approaches the orbit of Saturn.” althoug, The list of information to be collected will be weak. Nowadays, scientists suspect that the comet came from a (very) unknown. Oort cloud. A kind of bubbles “at the present time unobservable, located around the solar system, and filled with primordial ice fragments, of various sizes and shapes.”

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