A new guest in the solar system: discovered a comet of unprecedented size

The new object was named a comet on June 23, just a week after astronomers at the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile saw a small dot in the photos taken, reports livescience.com.

This point is now called Comet 2014 UN271, or Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (after Pedro Bernardinelli, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, and Gary Bernstein, an astronomer). The width of the impressive comet can reach 100 kilometers. It is currently separated from Earth by a distance 20 times greater than the distance between our planet and the Sun. The closest solar comet will approach in 2031. on January 23, when it will fly close to Saturn.

“We will have 20 years to study comets in practice,” said astronomer Peter Veres. He works at the Center for Astrophysics and the Center for Small Planets, established by Harvard University and the Smithsonian Institution, identifying new comets, small planets, and other small celestial bodies and calculating their orbits. According to him, this is an exciting possibility, as this comet is likely an object with almost no external influence from the comet Oorto cloud, a hypothetical comet cloud similar in size to the layer that surrounds the solar system.

Unidentified orbital object

Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein was first seen in the archives of the 2014 Dark Energy Camera. Mr. Bernardinelli and Mr. Bernstein quickly realized that an object that looked like an indistinguishable point was moving. This fact became clear after the analysis of 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. photos.

The astronomers shared their knowledge with the Small Planet Center, whose workers initially classified the object as an asteroid or a small planet because its surface appeared to be chemically inert. Still, the announcement of the new object prompted amateur astronomers to point their telescopes at the sky, with some of them noticing a “comet shell,” a tail of steam and dust.

“They found out that the object is active,” Veres told Live Science.

Comets are active because the sun’s rays and the solar wind release gas on their surface. Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein’s surface activity has likely increased in recent years as comets get closer to the Sun, Veres noted, making the activity all the more remarkable.

Long trip

Workers at the Center for Small Planets have estimated that the comet completes its orbit, which is vertical to the planets of the solar system, at about 5.5 million. years. At the farthest point, comets are separated from the Sun by almost a light year. Given the peculiarities of the comet’s orbit, it was most likely flying from a hypothetical comet Oorto cloud.

Objects like Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein were once part of the solar system, Veres said, but due to interactions with large planets like Saturn and Neptune, gravitational forces were pushed out of it.

Although the comet’s exact history is unknown, it may be its first trip back to the solar system, Veres noted. In this case, scientists should be particularly interested, because short-term comets in the solar system change significantly and lose a lot of mass due to prolonged exposure to the sun. Long-term comets, such as Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, travel mainly in the outer part of the solar system and remain largely unchanged. Consequently, they are a kind of time capsules that can provide useful information about the conditions that existed in the solar system early at the time of its formation.

“We get new data pretty much every day,” Veres said. While the comet still looks like a blurry spot and may not even create a spectacular sight as it zooms in, the precise instruments built into large telescopes will allow us to quickly detect changes in the light emitted by the comet and find out which molecules are being shed. of its surface. These data can help determine the composition of the comet.

Source: https://minorplanetcenter.net