The Largest Comet Ever Heading Towards Earth IS Discovers BY NASA

 

After Hubble Space Telescope observations, NASA approved that the largest comet ever spotted has a diameter of around 85 miles and is now formally the largest comet ever seen.

Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein, two astronomers made the C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB)) discovery in 2014. They did this by analyzing Dark Energy Survey historical images. The comet's nucleus diameter has been officially confirmed by NASA to be 85 miles wide using the Hubble Space Telescope. BB's diameter had previously been believed to be between 62 and 124 miles.

The previous record-holder comet C/2002 VQ94, which has an estimated nucleus diameter of 85 miles, has been exceeded, according to NASA's blog, by BB. The comet has been speeding toward Earth for a million years, and according to the space agency, it won't risk the planet when it makes its closest approach in 2031, when it will pass within a billion miles of it or around the distance between Earth and Saturn.

 Consider that the area of BB will be larger than the state of Rhode Island

This is an incredible object, given how active it is when it's still so far from the Sun. The paper's lead author Man-To Hui of the Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macau stated that although they had a rough idea of the comet's size, they required the best data to confirm it.

"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. We've always suspected this comet had to be big because it is so bright at such a large distance. Now we confirm it is," said David Jewitt, a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and co-author of the new study published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.