The largest comet ever discovered approaches our Sun
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The largest comet ever discovered is coming towards the Sun and could arrive in about 10 years. The comet is known as the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet (or C/2014 UN271).
How big is the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet?
It is at least 62 miles (100 kilometres) across. That’s about 1,000 times bigger than a usual comet. It’s discovery was announced in June 2021.
The largest comet is moving rapidly through the Oort cloud. This is a vast area of icy rocks, billions of kilometres from Earth in the outer parts of the solar system.
What are scientists saying?
For now, astronomers feel that the huge rock poses no threat to Earth. Right now, the largest comet is travelling through the Oort cloud at a speed of about 29 times astronomical units or AU (an AU is the distance between Earth and the Sun).
The comet’s closest approach to Earth will occur around 2031. It will be quite far and humans won’t be able to see it without telescopes.
Its last visit
Scientists say that the last time the largest comet came close to our Sun was 3.5 million years ago. Since then, the comet has travelled as far as 40,000 AU away.
The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is helping us learn more about the largest comet. This is a project to study the expansion of the universe and it ran between August 2013 and January 2019. During the survey, astronomers mapped 300 million galaxies. Over the next ten years, astronomers will keep studying it and we will learn more.
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