The comet is between 62 and 124 miles (100 to 200 kilometers) wide. The team announced the discovery in June 2021.
Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is currently about 1.8 billion miles (3 billion kilometers) — roughly the distance Uranus is from the sun — and at its closest point in 2031, it is only slightly further away than Saturn is from the sun.
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“We have the privilege of finding maybe comet largest ever seen or at least larger than well studied,” said Professor Gary Bernstein, the comet’s discoverer with University of Pennsylvania graduate student in physics and astronomy Pedro Bernardinelli.
This unusual opportunity to study inbound comets will give astronomers a chance to better understand the origin and composition of comets. This may be just one of many giant comets originating in the Oort Cloud.
Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein came from the Oort Cloud object, a group of isolated icy objects that are more distant than anything else in our solar system. Scientists believe this is where comets come from, but they have never actually observed objects in the Oort Cloud.
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The Oort cloud is located between 2,000 and 100,000 astronomical units from the sun. Eventually, NASA spacecraft such as Voyager 1 and 2, as well as New Horizons will reach the Oort Cloud. But by the time they do, their resources will be dead for centuries.
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