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Past studies of the composition of comets near the Sun have revealed the same mixture of volatile ices. These icy volatiles lift off from the comet and release dust, forming the coma. This comet is so far away and so incredibly cold that water ice there is frozen like a rock."īased on the Hubble observations of K2's coma, Jewitt suggests that sunlight is heating frozen volatile gases - such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide - that coat the comet's frigid surface. "Instead, we think the activity is due to the sublimation of super-volatiles as K2 makes its maiden entry into the solar system's planetary zone. "K2 is so far from the Sun and so cold, we know for sure that the activity - all the fuzzy stuff making it look like a comet - is not produced, as in other comets, by the evaporation of water ice," said lead researcher David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles. Comets are the icy leftovers from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and therefore pristine in icy composition. The comet's orbit indicates that it came from the Oort Cloud, a spherical region almost a light-year in diameter and thought to contain hundreds of billions of comets. The comet, called C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS) or "K2", has been travelling for millions of years from its home in the frigid outer reaches of the solar system, where the temperature is about minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit. These observations represent the earliest signs of activity ever seen from a comet entering the solar system's planetary zone for the first time. Slightly warmed by the remote Sun, it has already begun to develop an 80,000-mile-wide fuzzy cloud of dust, called a coma, enveloping a tiny, solid nucleus of frozen gas and dust. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the farthest active inbound comet ever seen, at a whopping distance of 1.5 billion miles from the Sun (beyond Saturn's orbit). This material balloons into a vast 80,000-mile-wide halo of dust, called a coma, enveloping the solid nucleus.Īstronomers will continue to study K2 as it travels into the inner solar system, making its closest approach to the Sun in 2022.
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Even at such bone-chilling temperatures, a mix of ancient ices on the surface - oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide - is beginning to sublimate and shed as dust. Temperatures, correspondingly, are at a minus 440 degrees Fahrenheit. Astronomers have never seen an active inbound comet this far out, where sunlight is merely 1/225th its brightness as seen from Earth. The comet is record-breaking because it is already becoming active under the feeble glow of the distant Sun. The Hubble Space Telescope was enlisted to take close-up views of the comet, called C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS (K2). Finally, in May 2017, astronomers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii spotted the solitary intruder at a whopping 1.5 billion miles away - between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. The comet is so small, faint, and far away that it eluded detection. This region is a vast comet storehouse, composed of icy leftover building blocks from the construction of the planets 4.6 billion years ago. The wayward vagabond, a city-sized snowball of ice and dust called a comet, was gravitationally kicked out of the Oort Cloud, its frigid home at the outskirts of the solar system.
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Four Successful Women Behind the Hubble Space Telescope's AchievementsĪ solitary frozen traveler has been journeying for millions of years toward the heart of our planetary system.Characterizing Planets Around Other Stars.Measuring the Universe's Expansion Rate.