The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provided astronomers with their best look yet at an interstellar visitor
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provided astronomers with their best look yet at an interstellar visitor — Comet 2I/Borisov — which is believed to have arrived here from another planetary system elsewhere in our galaxy.
Hubble photographed the comet at a distance of approximately 420 million kilometres from Earth. The comet is travelling toward the Sun and will make its closest approach to the Sun on 7 December, when it will be twice as far from the Sun as Earth. It is also following a hyperbolic path around the Sun, and is currently blazing along at the extraordinary velocity of over 150 000 kilometres per hour. By the middle of 2020, the comet will be on its way back into interstellar space where it will drift for millions of years before maybe one day approaching another star system.
Image credit: NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration / ESA - European Space Agency , D. Jewitt (UCLA), M. Kornmesser
