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C/2014 UN 271 is the second-largest known comet, being only behind 95P/Chiron. Radio thermal emission measurements by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in 2021 estimate a maximum diameter of 137 ± 17 km (85 ± 11 mi) for C/2014 UN 271 's nucleus , assuming negligible contamination of the nucleus's thermal emission by an unseen dust ...
The official names of non-periodic comets begin with a "C"; the names of periodic comets begin with "P" or a number followed by "P". Comets that have been lost or disappeared have names with a "D". Comets whose orbit has not been determined are designated with a "X" prefix.
The space agency said it’s the biggest comet nucleus ever recorded with an estimated diameter of 80 miles. On the whole, it’s bigger than the state of Rhode Island. The object, known as C/2014 ...
Named Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, it was perhaps the largest comet ever detected, likely some 10 times larger than the 6-mile-wide object that pummeled Earth and triggered the dinosaurs ...
Long-period comets like Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein likely originate from the Oort Cloud, the most distant region of the solar system more than 100 million miles away from the sun, NASA said ...
The comet was discovered in the constellation of Equuleus by Father Nicolas Sarabat, a professor of mathematics, at Nîmes in the early morning of August 1, 1729. [7] At the time of discovery the comet was making its closest approach to Earth at a distance of 3.1 AU (460 million km; 290 million mi) and had a solar elongation of 155 degrees.
In comet nomenclature, the letter before the "/" is either "C" (a non-periodic comet), "P" (a periodic comet), "D" (a comet that has been lost or has disintegrated), "X" (a comet for which no reliable orbit could be calculated —usually historical comets), "I" for an interstellar object, or "A" for an object that was either mistakenly ...
As space objects go, comets and meteors are not very big. While a planet like Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and a star like our Sun is about 865,000 miles across, the largest asteroid ...