Planet centauri update1/5/2023 ![]() Its nucleus is about 50 times larger than those of most known comets. Jewitt and his colleagues determined the size of its nucleus using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This comet has the largest nucleus ever seen in a comet by astronomers. ![]() "We've always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance. "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," Jewitt said. This huge one, called Comet C/2014 UN271 and discovered by astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein, could be as large as 85 miles across. ![]() The evicted comets took up residence in the Oort cloud, a vast reservoir of far-flung comets encircling the solar system out to many billions of miles into deep space, he said.Ī typical comet's spectacular multimillion-mile-long tail, which makes it look like a skyrocket, belies the fact that the source at the heart of the fireworks is a solid nucleus of ice mixed with dust - essentially a dirty snowball. ![]() The UCLA professor of planetary science and astronomy co-authored a new study of the comet in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Comets, among the oldest objects in the solar system, are icy bodies that were unceremoniously tossed out of the solar system in a gravitational pinball game among the massive outer planets, said David Jewitt. ![]()
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