Originating from outside our solar system, Comet 2I/Borisov is hurling past Earth at an incredible 110,000mph (177,000kph). NASA’s iconic eye in the sky Hubble captured the ghostly photographs over the weekend from a distance of 260 million miles (420 million km).
The comet is, in fact, the second confirmed interstellar visitor to enter our Solar System.
Whereas ‘Oumuamua appeared to be a rock, Borisov is really active, more like a normal comet
Professor David Jewitt
Gennady Borisov, an amateur astronomer from Crimea discovered the comet in August.
This took place two years after the first alien visitor, the bizarre cigar-shaped space rock called Oumuamua.
Professor David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles, who led the Hubble observation team, said: “It’s a puzzle why these two are so different.”
SEE HERE: NASA’s best pictures of Earth from the International Space Station
Dr Amaya Moro-Martin of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, however, described it as “very remarkable” how the comet’s properties appear to be so similar to those of our own solar system’s building blocks.
Despite the new image indicating otherwise, Polish astronomers using ground telescopes believe Comet 2I/Borisov is in fact reddish with a nucleus one mile (2km) wide.
Astronomers have calculated the comet will make its closest approach to the Sun in December.
Comet 2I/Borisov will then reach Jupiter’s distance by mid-2020, before returning to interstellar space.
Hubble – along with many other telescopes — will be on the lookout into next year.
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NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their best look yet at an interstellar visitor—comet 2I/Borisov—whose speed and trajectory indicate it has come from beyond our solar system.
A spokesperson for US-based space agency NASA wrote in a statement: “This Hubble image, taken on October 12, 2019, is the sharpest view of the comet to date.
Hubble reveals a central concentration of dust around the nucleus, which is too small to be seen by Hubble.”
Comet 2I/Borisov is only the second such interstellar object known to have passed through the Solar System.
In 2017, the first identified interstellar visitor, an object dubbed ‘Oumuamua, swung within 24 million miles of the Sun shortly before hurtling out of the Solar System.
What is the difference between asteroids, comets and meteors?
Asteroids are the rocky and airless remnants from the formation of planets in our Solar System.
Asteroids mostly orbit our Sun in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and range from the size of cars to dwarf planets.
Comets have been dubbed dirty space snowballs composed mostly of ice and dust formed during the Solar System’s birth 4.6 billion years ago.
Most comets have stable orbits in the outer reaches of the Solar System past the planet Neptune.
Meteoroids are tiny asteroids or the broken-off crumbs of comets and sometimes planets.
Meteoroids range in size from a grain of sand to boulders 3ft (1m) wide.
When meteoroids collide with a planet’s atmosphere, they become meteors.
If those meteors survive the atmosphere and hit the planet’s surface, their remains are called meteorites.
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