Canaveral Cape, Florida – The Hubble space telescope captured the best image of a high -speed comet visiting our solar system from another star.
NASA and the European space agency published the latest photos on Thursday.
Discovered last month by a telescope in Chile, the comet known as 3i-Atlas is only the third interstellar object known to go to our way and constitutes no threat to the earth.
Astronomers initially estimated the size of its iced nucleus several kilometers (tens of kilometers), but Hubble observations reduced it to no more than 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers). It could even be as small as 1,000 feet (320 meters), according to scientists.
The comet rushes to 130,000 MPH (209,000 km / h), but will approach Mars as from the earth, keeping a safety distance from the two. It was 277 million kilometers (446 million kilometers) when he was photographed by Hubble a few weeks ago. The orbit telescope revealed a plume of dust in the shape of tears around the nucleus as well as traces of a dusty tail.
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