The largest known comet is discovered by astronomers. It is nearly a thousand times more massive than other comets. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is between 62 and 124 miles (100 to 200 kilometers).
It was discovered by University of Pennsylvania department of physics and astronomy graduate student Pedro Bernardinelli and Professor Gary Bernstein. So it was named Comet Bernardinelli. The discovery was announced in June by the team.
In 2031, a rare comet will pass closest to the sun, but a huge amateur telescope is required to see it. The massive comet, also known as C/2014 UN271, is far away from our solar system and has been circling our sun for millions of years.
This is also the farthest comet to be spotted on its inbound trips. This is allowing astronomers to view and study it for many years. The Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile discovered comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein. This happened after collecting data for six years.
The Dark Energy Survey, a collaboration of over 400 scientists from seven nations and 25 institutions, uses the data produced by this camera. Comets are ice relics of the solar system. Those are thrown out when the massive planets are formed and migrated to their current configurations.
Comets’ ices evaporate when they approach our sun during their orbits, giving them their distinctive appearance.
A nucleus, or solid “dirty snowball,” is found at the heart of comets. As the comet’s ices evaporate, comas form, which are gaseous clouds that form around the nucleus. The evaporating gas and dust are also pushed behind the comet, resulting in two brightly lit tails.
These tails might be hundreds of miles long or perhaps millions.
“Since we’re a team-based all around the world, it just happened that it was my afternoon, while the other folks were asleep. The first image had the comet obscured by a satellite streak, and my heart sank. But then the others were clear enough and gosh: there it was, definitely a beautiful little fuzzy dot, not at all crisp like its neighbouring stars!” said Michele Bannister, an astronomer at the University of Canterbury.
Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is currently around 1.8 billion miles (3 billion kilometers) away from the sun. It is about the same distance as Uranus from the sun and will be just a little closer to the sun in 2031.
Astronomers will be able to better understand the comet’s origin and makeup thanks to this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study an approaching comet. It could be one of many massive comets that come from the Oort Cloud.
