NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made a spectacular new observation: what appears to be the largest comet ever discovered, at an astonishing 80 miles across, making it about the width of Vermont.
According to NASA, the space rock will only get within a billion miles of the Sun by the year 2031.
It is a dramatic discovery that could redefine what we know about the comet's suspected origin, a massive cloud holding other objects like it. It's likely the only one of its kind.
David Jewitt, professor of planetary science and astronomy at the University, said that this comet is the tip of the iceberg for many thousands of comets that are too faint to see in the more distant parts of the solar system.
He said that they had suspected that the comet had to be big because it was so bright.
Astronomers Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein discovered the giant space snowball after looking at archival images. Thanks to observations made by the Hubble, it has been confirmed that it is enormous.
The comet is about 2 billion miles from the Sun.
The object is so active that it is still so far from the Sun.
The team had to figure out how big the comet's nucleus is because of its coma. The team was able to conclude that the comet was bigger than they thought thanks to new Hubble data.
Jewitt said it was big and blacker than coal.
The Oort Cloud is a spherical shell that spans the entire solar system and has been screaming through space for a million years.
The team is hoping that their discovery will shed light on the Oort Cloud and what other distant treasures it may still be hiding from us.
Hubble has confirmed the largest comet nucleus ever seen.
Unfortunate comet flies too close to the sun, disintegrates and becomes a ghost.
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