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Huge comet is biggest of its kind

Gargantuan object is roughly 140 kilometres across — making it by far the largest comet from the farthest reaches of the Solar System.
An illustration of the distant Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein as it might look in the outer Solar System.

Comet Bernardinelli–Bernstein (pictured, artist's illustration) is nearly twice as large as Comet Hale–Bopp, which is nicknamed 'the great comet'. Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva (Spaceengine)

Observations of the ‘megacomet’ Bernardinelli–Bernstein show that it is around 137 kilometres in diameter, confirming its status as the largest known classical comet1.

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Nature 603, 204 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00588-4

References

  1. Lellouch, E., Moreno, R., Bockelée-Morvan, D., Biver, N. & Santos-Sanz, P. Astron. Astrophys. 659, L1 (2022).

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