The Hubble Space Telescope spotted the largest comet ever identified.
NASA shared news of Hubble's discovery on Tuesday, April 12 and said that the comet is larger than Rhode Island. The previous largest known comet held the record for 20 years.
According to the space agency, the nucleus of C/2014 UN271 is 50 times larger than most other known comets and has a mass that is a hundred thousand times greater than a typical comet.
The ball of ice and dust is travelling at 22,000 miles per hour from the edge of the solar system, but NASA says there is nothing to worry about.
Hubble determined the size of the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen!
It's larger than Rhode Island and heading this way at 22,000 miles per hour, but don't worry – it won't get closer than a billion miles from the Sun, slightly farther out than Saturn: https://t.co/l7Szt3adAx pic.twitter.com/1K6sqAJsU8
— Hubble (@NASAHubble) April 12, 2022
David Jewitt is a professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University. Jewitt said that the comet's nucleus is blacker than coal.
The comet was spotted by Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein in archival images from the Dark Energy Survey. It was first observed in November of 2010 and since then has been studied by telescopes both on the ground and in space.
The Macau University of Science and Technology helped to confirm the comet's size by examining five images of it taken by Hubble.
It was difficult to distinguish between the comet's solid nucleus and the huge dusty coma, as it was hard to establish accurate measurements.
The Hubble data shows a bright spike of light at the nucleus. The computer model of the coma was adjusted to fit the Hubble images. The coma's glow was removed to leave behind a starlike nucleus.
The team compared the brightness of the nucleus to earlier radio observations from the ALMA observatory.
The Oort Cloud contains trillions of comets, and the team believes C/2014 UN279 emerged from there. While most of the comets remain there, some are pulled away by a passing star.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been studying deep space for the past 30 years.
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