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K2 Incoming: The Most Primitive Comet Ever Seen, Still 1.5 Billion Miles Away

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A solitary frozen traveler has been journeying for millions of years toward the heart of our planetary system. 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. This region is a vast comet storehouse, composed of icy leftover building blocks from the construction of the planets 4.6 billion years ago.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

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). 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. These observations represent the earliest signs of activity ever seen from a comet entering the solar system’s planetary zone for the first time.

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. 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. Comets are the icy leftovers from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and therefore pristine in icy composition.

Since we’re seeing it so far away, past the orbit of Saturn, K2 is still in its early phase of activity, likely making it the most primitive comet anyone has ever seen.


Video: NASA, STScI, and Goddard Space Flight Center/K. Jackson;
Music: “Space Cake” by Donn Wilerson [BMI] and Lance Sumner [BMI]; Killer Tracks BMI; Killer Tracks Production Music.
“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. “Instead, we think the activity is due to the sublimation [a solid changing directly into a gas] of super-volatiles as K2 makes its maiden entry into the solar system’s planetary zone. That’s why it’s special. This comet is so far away and so incredibly cold that water ice there is frozen like a rock.”

This illustration shows the orbit of comet C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS (K2) on its maiden voyage into the solar system. The Hubble Space Telescope observed K2 when it was 1.5 billion miles from the Sun, halfway between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. The observations revealed a fuzzy cloud of dust, called a coma, surrounding the icy visitor, evidence that the frozen comet is being warmed by the Sun and releasing material. K2 is the farthest active inbound comet ever observed.

K2 has been traveling toward the Sun for millions of years from its home in the Oort Cloud, a spherical region at the edge of our solar system. The graphic shows the comet in its inbound journey, high above the plane of the major planets’ orbits. The orbits of the giant planets, from Jupiter to Neptune, are also shown in the diagram. The farthest object from the Sun depicted here is the dwarf planet Pluto, which resides in the Kuiper Belt, a vast rim of primordial debris encircling our solar system.

Credits:  NASAESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

Based 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. These icy volatiles lift off from the comet and release dust, forming the coma. Past studies of the composition of comets near the Sun have revealed the same mixture of volatile ices.

“I think these volatiles are spread all through K2, and in the beginning billions of years ago, they were probably all through every comet presently in the Oort Cloud,” Jewitt said. “But the volatiles on the surface are the ones that absorb the heat from the Sun, so, in a sense, the comet is shedding its outer skin. Most comets are discovered much closer to the Sun, near Jupiter’s orbit, so by the time we see them, these surface volatiles have already been baked off. That’s why I think K2 is the most primitive comet we’ve seen.”

K2 was discovered in May 2017 by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) in Hawaii, a survey project of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program. Jewitt used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 at the end of June to take a closer look at the icy visitor.

Hubble’s sharp “eye” revealed the extent of the coma and also helped Jewitt estimate the size of the nucleus — less than 12 miles across — though the tenuous coma is 10 Earth diameters across.

This vast coma must have formed when the comet was even farther away from the Sun. Digging through archival images, Jewitt’s team uncovered views of K2 and its fuzzy coma taken in 2013 by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) in Hawaii. But the object was then so faint that no one noticed it.

“We think the comet has been continuously active for at least four years,” Jewitt said. “In the CFHT data, K2 had a coma already at 2 billion miles from the Sun, when it was between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. It was already active, and I think it has been continuously active coming in. As it approaches the Sun, it’s getting warmer and warmer, and the activity is ramping up.”

But, curiously, the Hubble images do not show a tail flowing from K2, which is a signature of comets. The absence of such a feature indicates that particles lifting off the comet are too large for radiation pressure from the Sun to sweep them back into a tail.

Astronomers will have plenty of time to conduct detailed studies of K2. For the next five years, the comet will continue its journey into the inner solar system before it reaches its closest approach to the Sun in 2022 just beyond Mars’ orbit. “We will be able to monitor for the first time the developing activity of a comet falling in from the Oort Cloud over an extraordinary range of distances,” Jewitt said. “It should become more and more active as it nears the Sun and presumably will form a tail.”

Jewitt said that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, an infrared observatory scheduled to launch in 2018, could measure the heat from the nucleus, which would give astronomers a more accurate estimate of its size.

The team’s results will appear in the September 28 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C.
 

Contacts and sources:
Donna Weaver / Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland

David Jewitt
University of California, Los Angeles, California
 


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    Total 3 comments
    • K¡llúḿ¡ńàṫ¡✝☪ ॐ ﷲ ✡

      1.5 Billion Miles Away :lol: How do scientists know the distance between Comet :lol:
      it easy to calculate the distance very accurately :wink: How far is heaven from earth?
      There’s a lot of space junk up there, wil hit ISS International Space Station? :lol:
      Satellite was hit and damaged by Comet, UFO, :lol: but does it work?
      Satellites are designed to not crash into each other,
      which means that it’s very rare that their paths cross. Airplane :idea:
      But for many people, seeing is believing. All you have to do is look up. :lol:
      Our sun is 93 million miles away from the earth. :lol:
      Comet Is Zooming Past Earth Right Now, And You Should
      Be Able Takes Pictures From International Space Station :wink:

    • Firmament Does Exist

      More bs.

    • jdpent01

      jdp…Its in God’s plan to show us amazing heavenly events before the END OF TIME, by doing this he shows his awesome power that he is in control not man, man can’t control on earth the oceans, clouds, he thinks he has weathers modification and control. No, if he did, no hurricanes would hurt the country and he could turn rain, snow on or off at will, anywhere in the USA, MEN WHO DO NOT CREDIT GOD the creator and sustainer of our universe are delusional and they what God there are many, they say, but not true the Bible God’s word has never been proven wrong, why, because God can’t lie if he could the he would not be the Suzerain. Many false gods came about after fallen angels married the daughters of men in Noah’s time and had offspring that were a hybrid half human, half angel, this unholy union Almighty God did not want, these offspring became giants of the land to which we find today their bones of 10, 20-36 feet in size and heads 3 – 4 times bigger. These fallen angels came with Satan when he got kicked out of heaven down to the Earth. these offspring also called Nephilim, because of their former access to heaven they had powers we call supernatural and were seen as gods in ancient times which to this day we still have religions based on them, Hindu, Buddha,moon god Allah, and many others. None of these gods ever died for covering the Sin of man with his own blood, None, only Jesus God’s only son did, Jesus ‘The Christ’, who was the Word of God came from heaven, being manifested as a man called Jesus born of the virgin Mary. One who did not seek for himself fame or riches, but gave to all life the only one where God the father said ‘This is my beloved son, hear ye him’ now the leaders of his day Sadducee and Pharisees thought he was doing the work of Beelzebub and would not accept him. but TODAY YOU CAN ACCEPT HIM AS LORD AND SAVIOR, calling upon his holy name by being Baptized immersed in water calling the Lord to wash away your Sins and become a new creature in Christ. If you don’t want to be under the wrath that is coming on the world then you must be saved. While not having any Sin of his own, Jesus was baptized for the sins of the world, thereby giving all an opportunity to be like him free from Sin and added to the body of Christ his church. Time is very short, how short no one knows but you must be ready at any moment so when he come your ready to meet him in the air,if your not ready when he comes it will be too late. You see those who love the World don’t love Christ the are opposed to him and all he stands for righteousness, holiness, peace, and his followers will follow his voice [come up here] and be forever more with him in heaven. So get baptized. Now you heard that something big is going to happen soon and there a many companies selling survival gear for it but I tell you none of the can or will save you, just look at Puerto Rico you mean no body had survival gear ? if they did its not helping them at this time, only FEMA IS HELPING, SO IF BAD GOES TO WORSE AND LOSE OF LIFE ENSUES BE SAVED THAT THE ONLY TRUE LIFE LINE ONE CAN HAVE.

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