Nightmare! At a GIGANTIC 128 km, NASA Hubble Telescope reveals BIGGEST comet nucleus

The Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein has the largest known nucleus. The size of the same has been determined by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and it is huge!

By: HT TECH
| Updated on: Sep 30 2022, 18:32 IST
Wow! Second by second account of NASA craft crashing on Asteroid; check in photos
largest comet nucleus ever seen
1/5 NASA’s Double Asteroid Detection Test or DART test is a nearly $330 million mission to smash a spacecraft into the Dimorphos asteroid to deflect it away from its path. NASA had already sent the DART spacecraft to space in November, 2021 which included a satellite made by the Italian Space Agency. (Bloomberg)
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2/5 This stunning photo was captured 2.5 minutes before collision with the target Asteroid Dimorphos. According to NASA, the target asteroid Dimorphos is an asteroid moonlet nearly 530 feet in width. Dimorphos orbits a larger asteroid called Didymos, nearly 5 times its size. (Reuters)
largest comet nucleus ever seen
3/5 This amazing image was captured just 11 seconds before the impact. captured through cameras of a small companion satellite, which was the spacecraft’s camera called cubeSAT LICIACube (Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging Asteroids), was ejected from the DART spacecraft and followed it, 3 minutes behind, to the target asteroid Dimorphos. (Reuters)
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4/5 This extremely close-up image of the surface of target asteroid Dimorphos was captured just 2 seconds before impact with the asteroid. The DRACO system along with Small-body Maneuvering Autonomous Real Time Navigation (SMART Nav) algorithms aboard the DART spacecraft allowed it to distinguish between the larger Didymos and its target Dimorphos, striking the asteroid with precision accuracy, according to NASA. (Reuters)
largest comet nucleus ever seen
5/5 Although the spacecraft successfully collided with the asteroid, there is no clarity as yet whether the asteroid was actually deflected. To confirm that, European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft will observe the impact caused by the collision of DART spacecraft and Dimorphos asteroid. The space agency has already launched its Hera spacecraft which will travel to the same asteroid to observe the impact. (ESA)
largest comet nucleus ever seen
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Here is all you need to know about the largest comet nucleus ever seen- it is gigantic. (NASA, ESA, Man-To Hui)

Comets may be lovely to look at, but they are very dangerous for planet Earth! That begs the question, what is the biggest comet that hit Earth? According to NASA, the Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed the largest comet nucleus ever seen. It can be known that the nucleus is of Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein).

Wondering if the comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein can hit Earth? The comet will not be colliding with the planet on the current pass through the Solar System. However, the future is always unpredictable! Here is all you need to know about the Comet C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein:

C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has determined the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by astronomers. "The estimated diameter is approximately 128 km across, making it larger than the state of Rhode Island. The nucleus is about 50 times larger than found at the heart of most known comets. Its mass is estimated to be a staggering 500 trillion tons, a hundred thousand times greater than the mass of a typical comet found much closer to the Sun," NASA said.

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"The behemoth comet- Bernardinelli-Bernstein is barreling this way at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system. But not 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," the research agency informed further.

It can be known that the Comet C/2014 UN271 was discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in archival images from the Dark Energy Survey at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. It was first serendipitously observed in November 2010, when it was a whopping 3 billion miles from the Sun, which is nearly the average distance to Neptune. Since then, it has been intensively studied by ground and space-based telescopes.

According to NASA, the comet has been falling toward the Sun for well over 1 million years. It is coming from the hypothesized nesting ground of trillions of comets, called the Oort Cloud. The diffuse cloud is thought to have an inner edge at 2,000 to 5,000 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth. Its outer edge might extend at least a quarter of the way out to the distance of the nearest stars to our Sun, the Alpha Centauri system.

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein provides an invaluable clue to the size distribution of comets in the Oort Cloud and hence its total mass. Estimates for the Oort Cloud's mass vary widely, reaching as high as 20 times Earth's mass.

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First Published Date: 30 Sep, 18:32 IST
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