Hubble Telescope Confirms Largest Comet Nuclear Ever Seen

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by scientists. NPR reports: The nucleus of comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is about 80 miles in diameter, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island, NASA says. 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.

Comet C/2014 UN271 was discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein using archival images from the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The comet has been observed since 2010, when it was 3 billion miles away from the sun, and has been studied since then. NASA says there was a challenge in measuring the comet's nucleus because it was too far away for the Hubble telescope to determine its size. Instead, scientists had to make a computer model that was adjusted to fit the images of the comet's bright light that they got from the telescope's data.

Despite traveling at 22,000 mph, the massive comet is still coming from the edge of the solar system. But NASA assures us that it will never get closer than 1 billion miles away from the sun -- and even then, that won't be until 2031. The previous record-holder for largest comet nucleus was discovered in 2002. Comet C/2002 VQ94 was approximately 60 miles across.

Unfortunate typo in title

[terbeaux]

At the time of this comment the title is "Hubble Telescope Confirms Largest Comet Nuclear Ever Seen" The article specifically talks about "comet nucleus" not nulcear.

Re:

[zenlessyank]

Comet nuclear is enormously smallish in liquidness.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Revisionator BeauHD is mostly troublesome on the promulgation of word issuing.

Well, but furlongs per fartnight, actually.

[fyngyrz]

I don't think that's truly cromulent in this day and rage.

Re:Unfortunate typo in title

[msauve]

Welcome to /., where "editors", don't.

Re:

[bwt]

What a bunch of clowns.

Re:

[cstacy]

At the time of this comment the title is "Hubble Telescope Confirms Largest Comet Nuclear Ever Seen"

The article specifically talks about "comet nucleus" not nulcear.

Ge it right, please: it's pronounced "nuke-you-leer".

Re:

[rickb928]

Proofread, just proofread.

Editors have proofreaders for this, and hopefully read the articles they edit.

Apparently it is not enough to post the same submission repeatedly.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

Ge it right, please: it's pronounced "nuke-you-leer".

Thank you, President Carter.

Unfortunate typo in comment

[ayesnymous]

At the time of this comment the comment says the "article specifically talks about 'comet nucleus' not nulcear."

Only 75 miles, not as big as Texas...

[dyfet]

Bruce Willis can stand down...

Re:

[q_e_t]

Even more so, as according to TFS it's already nooclear.

Re:

[bill_mcgonigle]

In Texas it's a nukulur comet.

Re:

[BeerFartMoron]

Bruce Willis can stand down...

Too soon, bro. Too soon. [hollywoodreporter.com]

Nuclear comets

[xonen]

Don't think i've heard of or have seen nuclear comets before, in Hollywood movies or any other SF i recall reading (which admittingly isn't as much i should have).

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Nuclear comets

[Entrope]

Elon Musk will launch two spaceships: One sending a crew to blow up the comet, one to begin Earth's interstellar colonization. Their names will be "Armageddon" and "Outta Here". Eddie Izzard will get a free ticket on the second one.

Spellcheck.

[splutty]

Spellcheck is Slashdot editors' worst enema.

I think they meant 'nucular'

[tommeke100]

it embiggens the smallest comets!

Rather misleading

[RockDoctor]

No, not the title, but this bit :

The comet has been observed since 2010, when it was 3 billion miles away from the sun, and has been studied since then.

The comet was noticed in 2018 from archived images taken between 2014 and 2018 - which is why it got a 2014-designation. Further digging through the archives has since discovered previous images ("precoveries" in the field's lingo) which have improved the orbit calculation to the point that they could image it with Hubble (which has a very small field of view) and improve their estimates of the nucleus size.

The unwritten cause for interest in this object is that it is exhibiting substantial cometary activity out between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. That's not unprecedented ("Centaur" class bodies have been seen with cometary activity since ... ages ago. Mid-90s?), but it does suggest that this is a very fresh Oort cloud body on it's first (or very small number) entry to the inner solar system.

I wonder how long it has been incoming, and could we work out which body triggered it's visit to the inner system? TFA suggests a million years ... and within that time interval we've had multiple stars [wikipedia.org] coming reasonably close to the Sun. To choose between them, I'd need to go and gather more data. But it's a very doable event, given what we know is the arrangement of bodies near the Solar system.

Re:

[Opyros]

Mid-90s?

Chiron [wikipedia.org] was discovered in 1977.

Re:

[iikkakeranen]

Chiron's "cometary activity" wasn't. Its coma was discovered in 1989 and its tail in 1993, so GP was only off by a few years - well within the confidence interval given by the question mark.

Re:

[Opyros]

True, but Chiron was quickly thought of as at least cometlike. This paragraph is from Roger B. Culver's Astronomy, published in 1979:

Asteroid or Comet? In November 1977, Charles Kowal of the Hale Observatories discovered an unusual object orbiting the sun with a 50.7-year period along an orbit whose distance from the sun ranges from 1.3 to 2.8 billion km. Thus, the new object, called Chiron, is closer to the sun than Saturn at perihelion and almost as far as Uranus at aphelion. The estimated diameter of Ch

Re:

[RockDoctor]

I do remember the announcement of Chiron, when I was at school, and the discussion at the time of it's relationship to comet origins. But I knew that it was a considerable period of time after the discovery that the cometary activity was confirmed.

But yeah, I could have looked it up, but no, I couldn't be bothered.

GWB Sings

[waspleg]

Nucular [youtube.com]

The end is near

[sheph]

Great. Now we have nuclear comets. Might as well just end it.

Good to see the old workhorse has still got it!

[Whateverthisis]

I've been following closely the James Webb Telescope, which is an incredible marvel of engineering and it's capabilities are astounding. It's in position but not fully aligned or calibrated yet, so it's just about to get started, and is superior to Hubble in a lot of ways, mostly because it's designs include things we learned from Hubble.

But Hubble isn't dead yet! It can still do great science which is just awesome.

Velocity

[sudonim2]

For fucks sake! Give the velocity in km/s. It's the only measure that makes sense on that scale.