LCO astronomers say that Comet C / 2014 UN271 is the largest ever discovered

A new comet was discovered last month by astronomers called Comet C / 2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein. The image below is a composite image of synthetic color made with the telescope of an ambient observatory meter (LCO) located in Sutherland, South Africa. The image was taken on June 22, 2021, and the comet is at approximately the center of the image with a foggy and diffuse cloud that surrounds it.

Astronomers say that the diffuse cloud surrounding the brighter nucleus is the comet’s coma. C / 2014 UN271 Four of four years of Dark Energy Survey was reprocessed using the four-meter white telescope at the Inter-American Observatory of Cerro Tololo in Chile between 2013 and 2019. Astronomers determined that the object had become a Active comet In the three years since the dark energy survey saw it for the first time. Researchers have now found that C / 2014 UN271 is the largest known comet ever discovered.

Multiple comet images were taken when a team worked to discover if it was active, with the first image returned to have been obscured by a satellite streak. However, other images were clear, and astronomers could easily say to the diffuse point, it was not crunchy as the neighboring stars that pointed out that it was a comet. The images also allowed researchers to determine it, it was still 1,800,000,000 miles from the sun, which is more than double the distance in which Saturn’s orbits.

C / 2014 UN271 is estimated at more than 100 kilometers in diameter, which is more than three times the size of the next biggest core known by man, which is hale-bopp, discovered in 1995. C / 2014 UN271 Wait to be bright enough to be seen at first sight because the nearest distance you will reach the sun will still be beyond Saturn’s orbit.

However, since the comet was discovered at a great distance from Earth, astronomers will have more than a decade to study it. His closest approach to the Sun will happen in January 2031.