It’s definitive, comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein well and truly deserves its title of “largest comet ever observed”. Discovered in 2014, it only obtained this qualification in 2021 without its dimensions being precisely determined yet. Since the beginning of April 2022, this mystery is about to be dispelled.
In effect, the Hubble telescope was mobilized on the scientific operation in order to carry out this measurement. Located above the Earth’s atmosphere, it is spared human light pollution and other disturbing phenomena. According to New York Times, “the comet’s nucleus could have a diameter of up to 137 kilometers”. Its mass could be 500,000 billion tons, or “2,800 Mount Everest”, specifies the American daily.
According to scientists, we won’t be able to see this comet in the sky until 2031 and a sufficiently “close” passage to Earth. However, do not panic, the celestial object does not threaten Humanity, assure the specialists. In a little less than ten years, Bernardinelli-Bernstein should get closer to Saturn before returning to the confines of the Universe.
“Other secrets of the comet will be revealed when it approaches the orbit of Saturn”, predict the astronomers, quoted by the American media. However, the list of information that will be collected will be thin. At present, scientists suspect the comet came from the (very) unknown oort cloud. A kind of bubble “for the moment unobservable, located around the solar system, and filled with primitive shards of ice, of various sizes and shapes”.