In October 2014, researchers spotted a giant comet hurtling toward our solar system. At the beginning of January, the American space agency NASA examined the icy celestial body with catalog number C/2014 UN271 with the help of the “Hubble” space telescope and thus determined its size. Based on its diameter of 137 kilometers, they estimate the comet’s mass at about 500 trillion tons.
According to NASA, C/2014 UN271 is about 50 times larger than a typical comet and has 100,000 times the mass of an average comet found in the depths of the Solar System. By comparison, Comet Hale-Bopp (pictured below), which graced the night sky in an impressive way in 1997, was about 60 to 70 kilometers across.
“We suspected that the comet could be quite large, but we needed better data to confirm this,” said Man-To Hui of the Macau University of Science and Technology in Taipa, Macau. He and his team therefore took five pictures of the comet with “Hubble” on January 8 and were able to calculate its diameter and mass more accurately.
Mega Comet was found eight years ago in data captured between 2014 and 2018 as part of the Dark Energy Survey by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein (after whom it was eventually named).
Mega comet for Earth no danger
Last year, researchers reported that the absolute brightness of C/2014 UN271 indicated that the icy lump was still 29 AU (Astronomical Units, or about 4.3 billion kilometers) from the sun at the time. However, the gigantic celestial body will not become dangerous for the Earth. The researchers assume that it will probably never get closer than 1.6 billion kilometers to the sun.
Comet formed in the Oort cloud
What makes comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein so special, other than its size, is that it hasn’t visited the inner solar system for three million years — since about the time the famous human ancestor “Lucy” walked the Earth. C/2014 UN271 formed about 40,000 AU from our sun in what is known as the Oort Cloud, a remote region of space believed to be home to trillions of comets.
Source: Krone
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
