Study: The ‘monster comet’ heading towards the solar system is larger than the moon of Mars (PHOTOS)

In a recent study, researchers from the International Dark Energy Survey, or Dark Energy Survey, revealed new data about comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein.

This celestial body, officially named object C/2014 UN271, is said to have a diameter of 150 km, nearly seven times the diameter of Phobos, one of the Mars moons.

Thanks to successive studies, the size of this object was refined, until it was determined that its mass is ten times greater than the mass of comet Hale-Bopp, which became known as the Great Comet of 1997.

According to astronomer Will Grater’s calculations, C/2014 UN271 will not only be larger than the Mars satellite, but will also surpass the asteroid 55 Pandora and the space rock known as Arrokoth, he points out. study Posted on the arXiv portal.

While reading this morning’s tweets from Dr. Pedro Bernardinelli I was trying to understand how massive Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (C/2014 UN271) is. This is a graph I created to show its size compared to other solar system bodies.

The huge comet, which was discovered in 2014 and is heading towards our solar system, appears to come from Novim d’Ort A hypothetical region surrounding the ends of the solar system and containing billions of comet-like objects. Although there are no direct observations to confirm its existence, several situational factors indicate its presence.

At first, C/2014 UN271 was confused with a dwarf planet, but it was later found to have signs of activity and was reclassified as a comet.

Astronomers calculate that at its closest pass through our planetary system, which will occur in 2031, the mysterious object will approach about 10.9 AU from the Sun, when it reaches the Sun. Saturn’s orbit. The astronomical unit (AU) is the distance between the Earth and the Sun.