Ilustrasi Komet. (Pixie / Oven)
Hitechno.com – In order Astronomer A comet The giant is said to be the greatest invention of modern times.
Called the greatest in modern times, giant comet It is 1,000 times larger than an ordinary comet.
This material is called Comet C/2014 UN 271 or Bernardinelli-Bernstein.
That is, two graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania, Pedro Bernardinelli and astronomer Gary Bernstein, discovered this giant comet.
Astronomers estimate the icy object is 100 to 200 km in diameter, ten times wider than a regular comet.
However, this is an approximate estimate because the comet is very far from Earth.
The comet will make its closest approach to Earth in 2031, but it’s still quite a distance away.
“It’s possible biggest comet Never seen before,” said Bernstein, citing Space.com, Friday (2/7/2021).
The comet was first seen in archive images of the Dark Energy Survey taken in 2014.
Currently, comets are located about 20 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun, of which AU is about 150 million km from Earth-Sun.
When Comet C/2014 approaches Earth at UN 271 2031, it will be 11 AU away.
Another thing that makes the comet special, apart from its size, is that Comet C/2014 UN271 hasn’t visited the inner solar system in three million years.
According to the team of experts, the comet originated about 40,000 AU from the Sun in the Oort Cloud, a very distant region of space and is estimated to house trillions of comets.
Experts suspect there may be more undiscovered comets of this size hiding in the Oort Cloud beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
The team hopes to make observations of the comet as it approaches Earth using more advanced space telescopes in the future, such as the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Extremely Large Telescope and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.
That’s the discovery of a comet monster which is claimed to be the largest comet ever detected in modern times. (Suara.com/ Lintang Siltya Utami).
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