The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Hubble telescope has determined that a comet, which has a mass of around 500 trillion tonnes and is 137km wide, is heading our way.
However, we should not be worried as the closest it will get is more than a billion kilometers from the sun, and until 2031, that comet will not be, although it will be visible from our planet.
In 2010, The aforementioned comet was first spotted, but Hubble Telescope has confirmed its size.
“We’ve always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance,” stressed David Jewitt, a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, LA.
“Now we confirm it is. This comet is literally the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system.”
How did this comet get into the Solar System?
According to a statement from the space agency, the comet was discovered by astronomers Gary Bernstein and Pedro Bernardinelli in archival images from the Dark Energy Survey at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration describes the comets
as icy, planetary “Lego blocks.”
“They were unceremoniously tossed out of the Solar System in a gravitational pinball game among the massive outer planets,” read NASA’s statement.
“The kicked-out comets took up residence in the Oort Cloud, a vast reservoir of far-flung comets encircling the Solar System.”
Man-To Hui of the Macau University of Science and Technology stressed that they “guessed the comet might be pretty big, but we needed the best data to confirm this.”
“This is an amazing object, given how active it is when it’s still so far from the sun,” he added.
