NASA Announced On Tuesday
that the Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the largest comet ever seen, and it is truly massive.
The discovery of this star which has been nicknamed 'Earendel' sets a new benchmark for NASA as the star was formed in the first billion years after the Universe was formed.
The Nucleus Of The Comet
the icy object at its centre that does not include its tail—is estimated to be 80 miles across and weigh 500 trillion tonnes
C/2014 UN271
or comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, is the name of the icy behemoth
Astronomers
Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein, astronomers, discovered it in 2010.
Reseachers Have Only
recently been able to determine its exact size. This is partly due to the comet's distance from the planet Uranus, which is about 2 billion miles
It Is Also Because
comets are encased in a shell of gas and dust that forms their distinctive tails and shrouds their core.
Astronomers Led By
Man-To Hui of the Macau University of Science and Technology
Were Able To Seperate
the comet's core from its shell and reveal the size of its main body by combining computer models with Hubble's observations.
In A NASA Press Release
David Jewitt, co-author of a study describing the discovery, said, "It's big and it's blacker than coal."