The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers. The nucleus of comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is about 80 miles in diametre, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island, according to NASA.
The comet's nucleus is about 50 times larger than that of most comets and its mass is estimated to be a gigantic 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun.
Read | NASA's Hubble captures image of 'glittering star factories', netizens left speechless
The comet is moving this way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. However, scientists say there is nothing much to worry. 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.
It was first spotted in 2010, when it was a whopping 3 billion miles from the Sun, which is nearly the average distance to Neptune. But only now has Hubble confirmed its existence. The previous record holder is comet C/2002 VQ94, with a nucleus estimated to be 60 miles across. It was discovered in 2002 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project.
Comets are described by NASA as icy 'Lego blocks', left over from the early days of planet construction. "They were unceremoniously tossed out of the Solar System in a gravitational pinball game among the massive outer planets," it said in a statement.
Since 2010, this comet has been intensively studied by ground and space-based telescopes.
(With Inputs from nasa.gov)
