(ORDO NEWS) — According to scientists, the size of the comet has a nucleus 50 times larger than commonly found.
First discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in 2010, the comet has caught astronomers’ attention again thanks to new images from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The data showed that its nucleus weighed 500 trillion tons and was 137 kilometers across, making it the largest comet known to scientists.
Despite the fact that the celestial body is moving towards us at a speed of 35,000 kilometers per hour, there is no need to panic when it approaches in 2031, since its trajectory passes at a distance of a billion miles from the Sun.
“We always suspected that this comet must be large because it is very bright at such a great distance,” said UCLA planetary scientist David Jewitt. “We now confirm that this is the case.”
The comet follows a long elliptical path around the solar system. It travels its orbit in three million years. At its furthest distance, a comet can pass as far as half a light-year from the Sun.
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