The image on the left shows the comet on 8 January 2022. The right shows the ‘coma’ – an envelope around a comet’s nucleus. Credits: NASA, ESA, Man-To Hui (Macau University of Science and Technology), David Jewitt (UCLA)NASA announced on Wednesday its Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers.
The estimated diameter is approximately 80 miles across and its nucleus is about 50 times larger than found at the heart of most known comets.
Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun, NASA says.
The behemoth comet, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is barreling this way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system.
But not to worry, NASA scientists say. It will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the Sun, which is slightly farther than the distance of the planet Saturn. And that won’t be until the year 2031.
