Posted on 02/10/2022 5:46:21 AM PST by BenLurkin
Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein is currently inbound from the Oort Cloud, a distant region of the solar system known for packing billions and possibly trillions of icy objects. The comet will make its closest approach to Earth in 2031, when it will come to within 11 au of the Sun (1 billion miles), in which 1 au is the average distance from Earth to the Sun. The comet, coming no closer than Saturn, won’t likely be visible to the unaided eye, but astronomers will be keeping a close watch, as it’s turning out to be a rather extraordinary object.
Named after its discoverers, Pedro Bernardinelli and Gary Bernstein from the Dark Energy Survey, the comet is special for several reasons. Astronomers first detected the inbound object when it was still very far away—some 29 au from the Sun (2.7 billion miles). That’s as far out as the orbit of Neptune, but astronomers didn’t appreciate its significance until it came to within 24 au of the Sun (2.2 billion miles), at which time it began to display distinctive cometary activity. Researchers with Las Cumbres Observatory confirmed its cometary nature in June 2021. Its remarkable brightness indicated an object of enormous size, with preliminary estimates pointing to an object between 62 and 230 miles (100 and 370 kilometers) wide.
Bernardinelli-Bernstein is not the 230-mile behemoth suggested by preliminary measurements, but it’s still gigantic. As it nears the Sun, volatiles on its surface, especially ice, will increasingly sublimate, turning directly from solid into gas. This could give the comet a distinctive coma and tail, but we’ll have to wait a few more years to know for sure
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
Don’t listen to them. They are hiding the truth that the Arachnids have launched a “Bug Meteor” using Bug Plasma from the Klendathu system towards Earth.
The war between the telemarketers and the roaches is going to be GLORIOUS.
One-two punch?
Apophis then Bern-Bern...
Pow! Zap!
Communism may be defeated after all...
It’s funny. Oort is the sound it made, too. 😬
Is it Hot Fudge Sunday already?😁
That depends entirely on how close they get to the sun. If they never get closer than, say, the orbit of Neptune, they lose basically nothing -- it's just too cold. "Dirty snowballs" aren't going to evaporate at -200 or -300 Fahrenheit. Keep in mind also that those orbits take hundreds or thousands of earth years to complete. That means:
The comets we normally see cannot have lasted more than a 100,000 years
that that's not necessarily true at all.
bfl
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