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Researchers Confirm They’ve Spotted Biggest Comet Ever

✖Somewhere out there amongst the stars floats the Bernardinelli-Bernstein Comet, the biggest such object researchers have ever set their eyes on. The behemoth–which has an official name of C/2014 UN271–is the subject of a new study that has been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics Letters. As researchers put it, the comet is roughly 85 miles in diameter, or roughly 15 Mount Everest’s smashed together. At that size, the Bernardinelli-Bernstein Comet is nearly twice as big as the Hale-Bopp Comet, the previous record holder.Due to its size and distance from Earth, the study says the object might even make it one of the “most pristine” comets on record.”With its distant perihelion and uniquely large size, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is the prominent archetype of distant comets, whose activity is driven by hypervolatiles,” the study reads. “Monitoring of dust and gas emission as the comet will approach and pass perihelion will permit to study its activity time pattern and compare it to the distant (outbound) activity of Hale-Bopp. Post-perihelion thermal measurements will permit to study possible albedo changes, such as a surface brightening compared to pre-perihelion, as was observed for Hale-Bopp.”The comet was discovered last year by its namesake scientists Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein, and the study to research hits size was led by Parisian researcher Emmanuel Lellouch.”We have confirmed the estimate,” Lellouch said in a statement to New Scientist. “It’s the biggest comet from the Oort Cloud ever found. Now that we know the size, we are going to be able to study how active this comet is.”{replyCount}commentsAt its current rate, the comet will make its current approach on January 21, 2031 before it hurtles itself towards the Sun.
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Written by: Adam Barnhardt