The icy nucleus of Comet Bernardinelli–Berstein is about 80 miles (129 kilometers) wide
A gigantic comet is actually the largest ever seen, new observations by the Hubble Space Telescope confirm.
This comet is currently far from Earth, zooming along at about 22,000 mph . Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein has been falling toward the sun for over 1 million years. But don’t worry; the closest it will get to us, according to NASA, is about 1 billion miles, which it won’t even reach until 2031. With the observations from Hubble, researchers were finally able to officially confirm the mammoth size of this “dirty snowball.” At this point in Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein’s orbit, in which it is “only” about 2 billion miles from the sun, the icy object is about minus 348 degrees Fahrenheit .
The main challenge the team had in confirming the nucleus’ size was differentiating between the nucleus and the comet’s coma.
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