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The Hubble telescope helped determine the size of the gigantic nucleus of comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein

The Hubble Space Telescope helped NASA scientists determine the size of the nucleus of comet C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein, which was discovered almost 10 years ago.

The Hubble telescope helped determine the size of the gigantic nucleus of comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein

It turned out that this comet has a giant nucleus – 80 km in diameter, and this is a new record. It is also about 50 times larger than the average size of a comet nucleus in the solar system and 20 km larger than the previous record holder.

We have always suspected that this comet must be large because it is so bright at such a great distance. We now confirm that this is the case. This is an amazing object considering how active it is at this distance from the Sun.

The mass of the core is estimated at 500 trillion tons. Now the object is located at a distance of about 3.2 billion km from the Sun, and by 2031 it will approach our star at a distance as close as possible to itself, about 1.6 million km. The comet poses no threat to the Earth.

Source: ixbt

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