Written in NATIONAL the 15/4/2022 · 16:00 hs
Various studies carried out in Chile determined that comet C/2014 UN271 (or simply comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein) is the largest ever discovered.
The analyses, which were published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, They reflected that it has a nucleus of about 135 kilometers and 50 times larger than the comments seen before. In addition, its mass was found to be about 500 billion tons, which means that it is 100 thousand times greater than the mass of comets close to the sun.
Along the same lines, the studies, carried out by NASA, They announced that it travels in the direction of Earth, but will never approach our planet or the Sun.
Let us remember that this comet was discovered in 2014, by Chilean astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in our country.
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) planetary science and astronomy scholar and co-author of the research, David Jewittnoted that “this comet is literally the tip of the iceberg of many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the most distant parts of the Solar System”.
“We’ve always suspected that this comet had to be big, because it’s so bright at such a great distance. Now we confirm that it is”, added the expert.
To carry out the study, Hubble telescope technology was used to obtain images of the object and also radio observations.
Where is the comet now? At 3 billion kilometers from the Sun. Then, as detailed in the investigation, it must return to its nesting place (Oort cloud).